


myeongok (a dream-song) 3: London, 2015/16

by forochel



Series: chun/myeon/gok [3]
Category: Day6 (Band)
Genre: M/M, Minor Original Character(s), Modern Royalty, Noble Stupidity, Sickfic, Slow Burn, That Fucking Edict, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:34:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 30,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28061775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forochel/pseuds/forochel
Summary: year 3 of the london years._Reality sometimes really fucking bites, but you find your happiness where you can, right? A mistake is made, Wonpil and Younghyun both do a little more growing up (because pain makes you grow), and everyone else is concerned/confused/porque no los dos. All as we hurtle towards the end of Dowoon and Younghyun's time in London ... or do we?_prequel to bysine'schunmyeongok, inspired entirely by this one line:Younghyun spoke of London very little but always with an odd look on his face, like he was holding back a lot of feelings.'
Relationships: Kang Younghyun | Young K & Yoon Dowoon, Kang Younghyun | Young K/Kim Wonpil, Kim Wonpil & Park Jinyoung (GOT7), Kim Wonpil & Yoon Dowoon
Series: chun/myeon/gok [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1936813
Comments: 64
Kudos: 42





	1. An Unwanted Disclosure

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [chunmyeongok (a dream-song of spring)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24597997) by [bysine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bysine/pseuds/bysine). 



> DISCLAIMER: honestly if you haven't registered by now that this is extremely fictional about extremely fictional representations of real people idek what to do.
> 
> i have a note to myself at the top of my working doc that says '3.5K MAX PER CHAPTER PLS' and also 'WE HORTLE. WE HUSTLING WE HORTLING WE HOSTLING' so that's where my head is at rn.
> 
> (ALSO YES JAE FINALLY SHOWS UP IN THIS INSTALLMENT.)

* * *

Jinyoung moved out at the beginning of Dowoon and Younghyun's third — _final_ — year in London. His departure felt like a harbinger of things to come. Of the massive sea-changes Wonpil had insufficiently girded his soft tender insides for.

It was this dramatically tragic frame of mind that contributed to Wonpil scowling at Jaebeom the whole time that he was helping to unload Jinyoung's stuff from the embassy car.

"It's only halfway across London," Jinyoung had said on the drive over, "not another city. Please stop looking quite so forsaken, Pilie."

Younghyun had glanced over his shoulder and half-smiled. "If I'm free, I can drive you to visit Jinyoung."

"There you go then." Jinyoung had given Wonpil another one of those significant eyebrow raises that he'd taken to bestowing whenever Younghyun was being sweet. Like he knew about the way the nervous, guilty gorge rose in Wonpil's throat every time this happened. So Wonpil had been vaguely nauseous almost consistently since Dowoon and Younghyun had come back to London.

All these nasty, gnarly feelings, Wonpil — he might later admit — unfairly displaced in Jaebeom's general direction.

"Stop looking at him like that," hissed Jinyoung over the second-last cardboard box of books in his arms.

"It is my right." Wonpil slung a gym bag over his shoulder and made for the front door of the subdivided terrace Jaebeom rented a flat in. "As your best friend."

"This shovel talk has been years long, Wonpilie. Give it a rest, would you?"

"Well, I wouldn't have to if he weren't so consistently terrible to you."

"He isn't _consistently_ —" Jinyoung bumped him with the edge of the box and Wonpil stopped to turn and scowl at him instead. "He hasn't! And you know, after that fight we had last winter we sorted ... we sorted things out."

Wonpil narrowed his eyes. "Well, your room's always open if you change your mind, Jinyoungie, or if —"

"I won't _change_ —"

"— or if you need to get away for a bit —"

"Fuck _off_! Of all the hypocrisy, Kim Wonpil," Jinyoung said vengefully, propping his box up on the railing. "Who are _you_ to talk about _changing your mind_?"

Desperately, Wonpil interrupted him. "Jinyoung —"

"Especially," Jinyoung steamed on, "in regards to backpacking _getaways_ and—"

"— Jin _young_ ie —"

"— _stupid summer flings!_ "

There was a loud clang from the car boot, where Younghyun had been extracting Jinyoung's drying rack.

But when Wonpil, heart in throat, whipped around to look at him, his face in profile was perfectly composed. Third Lieutenant Kang as inscrutable as could be.

Jinyoung looked a little shocked at himself when Wonpil turned back to him, mutely aghast.

"Is this everything?" Younghyun asked, face blank, as he came around the back of the car with Jinyoung's drying rack folded and balanced atop Jinyoung's laundry basket.

"Ah ..." Jinyoung shot Wonpil an apologetic look. "Yes. Let's, uh, go up."

Feeling a little as though he were moving through fog, Wonpil let Jinyoung nudge him in through the door first, and led the way up the stairs.

When everything had been moved into Jaebeom's flat: ridiculously unwieldy drying rack, books, laundry basket stuffed to the brim with various throws and floor cushions and all, Younghyun turned to Wonpil.

This had to be the flattest aspect he had ever treated Wonpil with.

"I'll ready the car downstairs, _daegam-mama-nim_ ," he said neutrally.

Then, while Wonpil was still absorbing that gut-punch, Younghyun wished Jinyoung good luck, nodded at Jaebeom, and left. His back was ramrod straight and his chin held high; his hands were curled into loose fists by his side.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," Jinyoung whispered miserably, hugging Wonpil close. Jaebeom hovered behind, also looking worried. "Pilie —"

"It's all right," Wonpil said woodenly, then shook himself. "It — it'll be all right. 's not like it wasn't true."

"If you ever need —" Jinyoung stopped at the look on Wonpil's face. "Right, well. Would you like to stay for tea?"

Wonpil let out a little whimper of a laugh at the look on Jaebeom's face — his tiny spare room was piled high with Jinyoung's boxes of things; the drying rack was leaning up against the wall next to the door. "You need to start putting your things away, Jinyoungie."

"We could always do with help," said Jaebeom drily. "If you would like."

Jinyoung poked his boyfriend. "Tea and unpacking are not mutually exclusive."

The look that Jaebeom gave Jinyoung was so full of fond exasperation that Wonpil felt very abruptly he'd rather sit in a car with Younghyun in suffocating tension that spend a minute longer around them.

He shook his head and tried on a smile. "I've done my part helping Jinyoung pack. It's your turn now; no shirking."

"A cruel man," Jaebeom said, smiling a little knowingly. "All right then. Once we have all this sorted out we'll have you over for tea and cake."

"He's gone native," Wonpil told Jinyoung. "I should go; I don't know whether the filth care about diplomatic immunity in East London."

"You don't have to help unpack. You could just keep us company." Jinyoung took him by the hand. "Wonpilie..."

"No, it's fine." Wonpil sighed and closed his eyes, trying to center himself. Decisions; consequences. "It will be fine."

*

It was not fine.

The drive began exactly as suffocatingly silent and tense as Wonpil had expected, his mind feeling like it was atomising with everything he was feeling and didn't know how to say.

Several times he opened his mouth, turned to look at Younghyun — who was doing his very best Blank Royal Guard — and had to snap his mouth back shut and turn back to looking out the window. It was only now occurring to Wonpil that he'd never seen this mask in person before — only in photographs where Younghyun had been captured, standing his customary half step behind Dowoonie's right shoulder.

It felt as though some oppressive weight had fallen, the sort of heavy breath-taking pressure that preceded a thunderstorm. Certainly, it was stealing the very air from Wonpil's lungs, the weight of this self-inflicted misery. But Younghyun had at some point turned the radio on: a final statement about his desire to be spoken to.

So Wonpil tried to make himself as small as he could, hands folded in his lap, fingers gripping tight against the wild urge to seize Younghyun by the shoulders and say — say something, anything.

But he still hadn't thought of what to say when they got back, nor when they were kicking their shoes off in the vestibule — where only earlier in the morning Younghyun had caught Wonpil by the shoulders, as he'd been trying to back out of the door and almost tripped over the threshold instead.

"Hyung," he started in desperation on the landing to his floor, catching Younghyun by the sleeve. Then found himself hopelessly tongue-tied.

The thing was. The thing was that they'd never put words to this nebulous thing between them, this push-and-pull that made Wonpil feel giddy and nauseous by turns. He'd missed Younghyun so much, even though it'd been just for the summer. Just three months. No, not even that. And the realisation that all this would be — over. Done. Lost, in just a year — that all too soon, the terrible ache in Wonpil's chest would be a constant companion with no relief — the realisation had made something in Wonpil snap.

He'd had too much to drink in Granada, the sangria going down cold and easy and sweet, the alcohol and the stamp-clap-howl of flamenco buzzing in his veins. Inhibitions loosened, it'd been easy to just ... go along with the simple affection on offer; the promise of no obligation; the reassurance that when term started up again, this backpacking buddy would be in faraway Pennsylvania for the year, safely across the Atlantic.

Not that any of it mattered, in the end.

Here and now, a spasm passed across Younghyun's cheek.

Wonpil thought he might say something, but Younghyun just shook his head and pulled away silently. He walked up the stairs to the floor he shared with Dowoon, leaving Wonpil behind.

*

What passed next were possibly the most excruciating weeks of Wonpil's young life thus far.

The inward-turning misery of regrets useless and too late was compounded by an unpleasant reality opening itself up. Dowoon had turned 20 over summer. With his entry into adulthood, by modern Corean reckoning, the media moratorium on His Majesty King Dowoon of Corea had come to an end. Somehow, this meant people declaring open season on him.

"Who on earth," said Wonpil, "are all these people? Why do they think you are so interesting?"

"Thanks, hyung." Where Dowoon would have usually sounded dry, he merely sounded grateful, which was worse.

"Well, I mean, just look at this!" Wonpil gestured at the random website he had found that was apparently dedicated to stalking Dowoon. "Why? You're just falling asleep in a lecture! Why aren't they paying attention?"

Dowoon sighed and sagged against one of his many pillows. "I don't know, hyung. It's not like I'm Lee Seung-gi or, I don't know. An SNSD member."

Wonpil leaned over to give him a hug. He misjudged the distance and slipped, falling onto Dowoon. Like dominoes, they both went over and bounced a bit with the impact.

"Hyung," Dowoon said in a muffled whimper, "you're not that light."

Levering himself off Dowoon — these bedsheets were ridiculously slippery — Wonpil punched him in the shoulder. "Exile _them_ from Corea." He paused. "Or, I s'pose, get a restraining order?"

"They're only taking photographs ..."

"They're invading your privacy! Look at you! You haven't even shaved!"

Dowoon sighed. "I think it's just ... it's part and parcel. Of the, uh, the ... the whole thing. You know. As long as I don't do anything bad or ..."

"Dowoonie..." Wonpil could feel the pout coming on, but couldn't do anything to stop it. "Can't Young — or, I mean, the Guard? Can't they do anything about it?"

There was a rather nervewracking lull in the conversation as Dowoon gave him a long, contemplative look.

Wonpil didn't know if Dowoon's perceptive nature was — well, just that: if it was nature or nurture, some ambiguously happy byproduct of his strange, cloistered upbringing in a royal court. He was merely grateful that Dowoon had come out of all of that mostly whole and that innate kindness preserved, so that Wonpil unexpectedly gained a cousin like a little brother.

Given the circumstances, Wonpil did wish Dowoon would confide a little more. Surely, Wonpil thought, Dowoon resented the constraints of his life, despite all the comforts he could command? Surely, having been shown life _outside_ , he would ... he would have fantasies about life as it could be?

But Dowoon only grumbled about difficult coursework, or sometimes spoke wistfully of missing the seaside in Busan, when a seagull that had flown up the Thames into London called in the distance and stirred some native longing. On rare occasions that made fondness curl through Wonpil's chest, he would indulge in childish sulking about some minor slight Wonpil or - or Younghyun may have occasioned upon his royal person.

Dowoon looked away then, heaving a defeated little sigh. In that moment, Wonpil fervently hope that Dowoon would not turn the confessionary tables on him; Wonpil did not want to discuss what had passed or not passed or almost passed between Younghyun and him.

"If they got too close, or too invasive, maybe," Dowoon said. "But other than that ... I'm afraid not."

*

The thing Wonpil had reckoned without was how he might be caught up in the mild hullabaloo surrounding Dowoon.

He had been so used to thinking about the royal aspect of Dowoon's life being separate from himself — so accustomed to only seeing Dowoon, accompanied by Younghyun, coming and going from various engagements. He had thought himself in charge of injecting as much normalcy into Dowoon's bizarre life as possible; a creature entirely tied to the ground, for whom the dizzying stratosphere of Dowoon's life outside of university and the house was so far away as to be insignificant.

"I'm such an idiot," said Wonpil blankly. The staticy buzz of his brain was qualitatively better than the aching hum of bereavement unjustified, at least.

Before him was a printout of some fansite (which Wonpil had learnt these stalkers were called) that had taken photographs of Dowoon greeting him at the top of some stairs, right next to a neon sign blazing the name of a bar in the Bloomsbury nearish the IOE. Anyone who knew, knew that this was a cosy, friendly little neighbourhood bar. It also happened to be a gay bar.

The night air had been crisp, and Dowoon had wanted fresh air after an entire evening of enforced small talk in a stuffy event hall warm with overenthusiastic radiators and bodies. Younghyun had been there too, of course, leaning at attention against the car; for once, he had been out of frame.

Some tabloids had got hold of the photographs — or taken their own, Wonpil wasn't certain of the details — and thus everyone from the Gyeongbokgung in Busan to the embassy to his own grandfather were in apoplexies of rage and contained panic.

"Don't worry, hyung," Dowoon said, holding Wonpil's arm. He sounded remarkably unruffled for someone who was being subject to scurrilous rumour. Not that there was anything scurrilous about being gay, it was just — Wonpil shuddered away from the thought. "The Palace will stand behind you. Publicly! I've told them to make a statement. Another one! After the club last year."

"Oh, that isn't — I mean —" Wonpil glanced between the two of them. "I mean, but what about you?"

Dowoon shook his head. "Easily cleared up with the statement."

Wonpil sat down with a thump on the chaise longue. "I can't believe I'm going to be in an official, royal statement, and it's because I'm fucking gay." He blinked, panic starting to rise up through the blank fuzz. "I can't believe — are there going to be photographs of _me too_ , now? That, I mean, I'm going to be working with kids! I've got placements!"

"That," said Younghyun with grim satisfaction, "we can at least do something about." He seemed almost to have forgotten that he was angry with Wonpil, as his eyes flicked up from his laptop screen. But then he continued, " _Daegam-mama_ being mostly a private citizen."

Wonpil bit his lip; Dowoon made an unhappy noise.

Unable to help the anxious beating of his heart or the cold vinegary fear in his chest, Wonpil ventured, "I'm sure you will."

Yyounghyun's shoulders stiffened; the sharp line of his jaw tensed, like the sound of Wonpil's voice alone was hurting him. Or, no, Wonpil had been babbling earlier in his initial shock. This was, perhaps, because Wonpil was speaking directly to him.

Feeling something in him give way, like a rib collapsing, or the last tiniest balloon of hope puncturing, Wonpil touched Dowoon on the elbow and went away, out of the room.

*

Whatever the embassy and all that lot did was mostly effective. Not that Wonpil would've noticed any but the most egregious invasions of his private life, in any case.

Wonpil got used in quick order to going about without constantly looking over his shoulder again, and merely being reminded at odd bursts in the strangest of places of Dowoon's general position in society: the magazine rack at the Tesco Express near Russell Square station; radio items; leafing through the papers that somehow made their way into the common room during a lunch break, only to be confronted with a photograph all official-like of his cousin giving The Queen Herself a tiny, solemn smile somewhere in a terribly manicured garden.

This illusion of having faded from public interest — or, well, the extremely specific interest of those who thought the Corean crown a compelling subject — was put paid to when the weather turned properly to November. It was wet and grey and horrible, just like Wonpil's general frame of mind. Everything was upsetting: Dowoonie being beset by paparazzi like he wasn't just a university student doing his best; the way Younghyun was stonily ignoring his existence; the roiling guilt that swelled whenever he so much as thought of Younghyun.

Only focusing hard on his coursework; on the way he felt he had to learn a whole new language for his readings; on the way he felt his brain creaking to encompass all these new ways of thinking and _learning_ , obscured the misery. That, and music.

Wonpil was in one of these fugue states when Younghyun's loud exclamation had him jerking his head up.

Across the room, next to Younghyun, Dowoon was also looking at him, owl-eyed with surprise. Wonpil gathered that Younghyun had said something very rude in Corean.

"Hyung?" Dowoon asked.

"Don't look," ordered Younghyun, poking angrily at his tablet. Wonpil's heart sank, even though there was _nothing_ that Dowoon could possibly have done to be misconstrued so terribly that Younghyun looked so fierce. "That means _both_ of you." Younghyun added, before returning to type forcefully.

"Me?" The question fell out of his mouth before Wonpil could swallow it down; the panicked regret that followed chilled him through, soured his nose.

"Oh dear," said Dowoon. "Somebody's about to lose their job."

" _Lose_ their _job_?"

"Nobody's losing their job," snapped Younghyun. "They've just dug up — never mind. Don't worry about it."

But Wonpil couldn't help _but_ worry about it, even after Lady Ko _all the way from Busan_ had kindly explained to him over video call that any rational person (see: future employer) would see that all the fault was with the tabloid reporter with a particularly torrid imagination, and that no it would better if he didn't know, and that no, this did not hurt Dowoonie's reputation in Corea at all.

"Dowoonie, let's go get pastries," he said late one afternoon, after having come across yet another set of photographs of his cousin on a Naver blog (Jinyoung had taken to sending him updates, complete with sardonic question marks as commentary). It wasn't that it had been unflattering or salubrious; it was just that ... people tended to make a mountain out of a molehill. And when the molehill was the King of Corea bending low to listen to a pretty coursemate outside of a lecture theatre, well. There lay a molehill ripe for building mountains. "From that place you like. They've got hazelnut ones specially on."

Dowoon perked up. He had been looking grimmer of late, though he hadn't said anything after a rebellious mutter about " _can't help it if I'm tall_ " and _"we were just discussing our project_ ". But he was, of course, always up for a crunchy, sweet treat.

To his gratification, Younghyun was already unfolding himself from where he'd been stretching in a corner. It was a distraction that Wonpil had mostly become inured to, as long as he listened to very loud music and made sure to put his back to all the goings-on.

"And," Wonpil continued, because hope did spring eternal from some foolhardy source, "they've got those fancy sausage rolls that — that you like so much. Um." Hope abruptly dried up like a winterbourne in the onset of the cold, as Wonpil abruptly realised he didn't dare address Younghyun to his face, by his name.

"We'll get some," Dowoon said into the awkward pause where Younghyun would previously had said something teasing. "And those cheese ones too, with the eggs. Hyung, do you want to come along, or can Sergeant Jung? He's just outside."

With barely a flicker of his lashes, Younghyun sank back into his stretch. "Sergeant Jung is fully capable. Have a good time."

So did Wonpil's first term of his teacher training pass. He did his best not to let it show, especially with new coursemates and friends to make. It mostly worked, he thought, even though it ached — aches upon aches, these months: to see how Dowoon quietly withdrew a little more into his shell, and how Younghyun got correspondingly tenser.

And for all of Wonpil's attempts to make up for it, to cheer both of them up — well. On one hand he was constrained by circumstances beyond his control — a bitter lament he knew too well — and on the other, stymied by the way Younghyun's blank politeness persisted. Sometimes Wonpil thought he caught Younghyun's eyes blazing at him, and that was better than the perfect mask of indifference that it felt all his attempts at reconciliation just slid off of.

The only way, Wonpil resolved one otherwise unremarkable Tuesday night, could be through.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> to quote bysine at some point in this chapter: "the oofiest of oofs".
> 
> if this made you feel a ling, please let me know in a comment! also if you like, [retweet](https://twitter.com/forochel/status/1340516873717354499) season 3 of this silly soap opera. thank you!


	2. A Drunken Apology

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in vino veritas, I guess

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> short & sharp.

It was late — almost midnight, when they finally got home from a special exhibition opening at the V&A, featuring — amongst others — the works of some contemporary ceramic artists from Corea.

"I still don't understand why they hold these in the middle of the week," yawned Dowoon as he tugged his smartly heeled low boots off. "And so close to the end of term, too."

Younghyun didn't bother pointing out that the organisers would hardly have been thinking about term dates when planning their exhibition. He was in fact already in his house slippers and venturing out of the vestibule to look into the sitting room, from which the distinct fuzz of a playing record emanated. Some kind of dramatic, dark orchestral music, a violin singing high and sorrowful over it all.

Within: Wonpil in his pyjamas on the floor, leaning against one of the reading chairs near the unlit fireplace. He was gazing half-lidded into the cold black grate, looking at something farther away perhaps; he was wine-flushed, loose-limbed but unsmiling. Younghyun had never seen him so, not when he'd had something to drink.

Judging from the bottle loosely grasped in Wonpil's left hand, he'd had more than just _something_. Wonpil was sitting directly in a shaft low light from one of the floor lamps; thus illuminated, the bottle showed more deep green than the dark opacity of wine through glass.

"Oh no." Dowoon came to a stop next to Younghyun in the doorway. Wonpil hadn't noticed either of them yet, so preoccupied was he. Also, he was a notorious lightweight and that much wine had probably obliterated most of his spatial awareness.

"I'll deal with this, _pyeha_ ," said Younghyun absently. "Please go ahead."

"Hyung," said Dowoon unhappily.

"Ah." Younghyun looked at him. "Sorry, haven't made the switch yet. Seriously though, Dowoonie, go on. I'm used to handling a drunk Wonpil."

Dowoon, who obviously had noticed something had been off between them, hesitated a little.

"It'll be fine. Just trying to make sure there's no alcohol poisoning happening under this roof."

"Be nice," instructed Dowoon, before heading up the stairs.

"I'm always nice," Younghyun whisper-shouted after him indignantly, before repeating it to himself as he went over to Wonpil and knelt by him.

Close up, Wonpil looked tired in a way that edged into weariness, a little drawn and with incipient bruises under his eyes that only used to appear near the end of the year. Sour, tender concern warred with the embers of betrayed anger that smouldered still. It seemed unfair that he should know these things about Wonpil, and feel this way, when Wonpil had so —

Younghyun shook his head at himself.

In the past eleven weeks, he had learnt what it meant to be wretched. It was unnecessarily dramatic; it was hardly even the most physical _or_ psychological suffering he'd undergone — _that_ dubious honour was reserved for outfield training exercises, if Younghyun were giving _unclassified_ information.

It both made and did not make all the sense in the world, this unending caving in of his ribs. This endless animal hurt he couldn't root out, couldn't resolve or make sense of. After the first month — when Wonpil had been swept up in the internet squall that excited netizens had been stirring since His Majesty's birthday, Younghyun decided he had to try harder to move past it.

Easier said than done, when he was consumed with wanting to rant at someone and having nobody to rant to: not his concerned coursemates; not his fellow Guards; and most certainly not Dowoon, whom to his credit had tried. Easier said than done, when the realisation had dawned as he'd paced in the community garden and run til he was breathless in Hyde Park: whom he would have turned to in the past would have been — been the boy lolling drunkenly by a cold fireplace, right before him.

"All right, enough of that," Younghyun said, as much to himself as to Wonpil.

The bottle, Younghyun plucked out of Wonpil's loose grip; the mug by Wonpil's side, he moved carefully away. Wonpil, ridiculously, had apparently been pouring it into a mug and been holding onto the bottle for no good reason.

By this point, Younghyun could tell what a good wine versus a great wine was. This, looking at the label (Pomerol 1996) and smelling the wine (complex, rich, hints of barnyard; he hoped Wonpil had _eaten_ something), was the latter. Something from Wonpil's grandfather, perhaps. He put it together with the mug on the cool marble of the outer hearth.

"What?" Wonpil stirred — the violin wailed in the background over shirring strings and a mournful oboe accompaniment — and then, blinking rapidly, sat up.

"Bed," said Younghyun in English shortly. "It's late."

Wonpil was still blinking. "Hyung? You're home?"

"It's almost midnight, of course we are. Get up, you shouldn't sleep here."

Spotting Wonpil's laptop and printed out readings, a carefully clipped together sheaf that had LESSON PLAN (TEMPLATE) scrawled across the top, Younghyun couldn't help but ask, even as he was trying to chivvy Wonpil to his feet without actually touching him, "You weren't drinking while working, were you?"

Wonpil drew his feet in to — no, not to gather them under himself, but to curl to one side while he flopped back against the reading chair he'd been using as a backrest. "No ... no. Just a bit." He sighed and looked haggard for a brief moment. "Only for th' last — mmm. I'unnow. Stopped working a..." twisting to look at the clock, he murmured a little _Oh_ , almost silently.

"Okay, time to go to bed."

"Wait!" Wonpil whipped around so fast he almost fell over, catching himself last minute against — against Younghyun himself, who had moved without forethought. Younghyun made to disengage, but then Wonpil curled his fingers into his shirt. "Wait, hyung..."

"It's fine," said Younghyun hastily. "Whatever it is, it can wait —"

Shaking his head, Wonpil interrupted, "'m sorry, hyung."

It seemed like Wonpil was determined to give him breathing difficulties.

"I know you're pissed off," Wonpil went on, still clinging, eyes wide and voice trembling. "I deserve it, I know —"

"I'm—" Younghyun swallowed the denial back. He didn't want to lie to Wonpil's face, not about this. "Let's just get you to bed, okay?"

"No, Youngyeonie-hyung," Wonpil insisted, eyes glassy. "'m so — I shouldn't've, I should've known, it felt bad — like. Like chewing, whenever we ..." Younghyun's mouth twisted, unbidden. Wonpil faltered to a stop and blinked. Tears clumped his eyelashes. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't've..."

Younghyun really wasn't built to watch Wonpil cry without panicking at least a little bit inside. But he was — even like this, he was still a little angry, still felt the panging echoes of the hurt that had felt a lot like the time Sergeant Jung hadn't pulled a gut punch in time. Because Jinyoung's slip of the tongue had felt exactly like one. Would he ever have known, otherwise? And the kicker: had he ever had the right to feel this way?

Holding himself in place, curling his fingers into the carpet, Younghyun said, "There's no should or shouldn't."

But now this felt like a fresh cut, entirely self-inflicted, because Wonpil's lips parted in a silent _oh_ , and his face froze.

"There isn't?" he asked, voice small and watery.

Fuck, fuck, _fuck_. Younghyun sucked in a quick breath, unable to say it. Yes or no; he couldn't.

"Hyung —" Wonpil edged closer, his eyes wide and wet and pleading. "Isn't there?"

Time froze. Suspended in the moment, potential futures splintered like spidering cracks through ice away from where Younghyun was standing, and he couldn't tell which way he wanted to fall. He closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath.

Sighing it out, he opened his eyes. Wonpil was still staring, lower lip rolled into his mouth and caught under his teeth.

"I — " Younghyun looked away and took another steadying breath "— I'd thought so."

A broken little noise fell out of Wonpil's mouth. His fingers in Younghyun's shirt uncurled slightly.

Younghyun wondered if this was how break ups felt. Younghyun wondered how you could break up something that never was.

"There is," Wonpil sniffed. Tears tracked down his cheeks. "For me." And then he hiccupped abruptly. "I shouldn't've, 'cept you were so — so far away, 'n I felt so — so —" his face crumpled, and then he swayed even closer and Younghyun had to catch him by the shoulders before either of them did something they regretted. Or, more terrifyingly: something he wouldn't regret, though he would the circumstances.

"Pilie," he said, low and tender as he wanted, because there was little chance Wonpil would remember this. "It's all right."

And it really was, as horrible and small as it made Younghyun feel. To know that Wonpil felt _this_ bad, to know that Younghyun hadn't entirely hallucinated the impossible thing between them so heavy and dense it was almost tangible. To know that in some way, to some extent, the way Wonpil had slipped sweet step by unassuming step into the atria and ventricles of his heart, was reciprocated.

"'s not," Wonpil murmured, fat tears still rolling down his cheeks.

Younghyun shifted his grip so he could cup Wonpil's face, the way he'd dreamt of for so long, and stroke the tears away with his thumbs. "It really is." He wanted so, so badly to kiss him.

"I miss you," Wonpil said in the slow, deliberate way of someone whom the wine was hitting very hard, and his words were all the more devastating for it, "even when you're here."

How many times had Younghyun felt the same thing, before hauling himself firmly back into the present? "Wonpil-ah..." he thumbed away the tears gathered brimming along his lashes. "I'm here, right now."

Wonpil stared up at him with big, swimmy eyes. "I guess." His blinks this time were slow and heavy.

Since he'd already bloody cradled Wonpil's face, Younghyun gave up and let himself physically manhandle Wonpil to his feet. It was much more efficient, this way, and Wonpil was — with whatever tension had been holding him up now quickly draining away — as pliant as a ragdoll.

After he'd shepherded Wonpil through the familiar motions of cleaning his teeth and supervising him crawling into bed, Younghyun went back down and through the house to sit on the back stoop. There was a little strip of green here, between the back of the house and the smaller mews houses beyond the high fence. Not much grew, other than a stubborn tree and perennial grass.

Like most nights, the sky was clouded over, so that the moon barely shone through. But this late, the air was as fresh as it ever got in central London, cold and nippy with a hint of oncoming winter. Scouring, even.

Younghyun sat, leaning against the doorjamb and thinking in circles, until he was chilled through, and went back in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the alternative summary for this chapter courtesy of bysine: _join the royal guard: you get a uniform and a lifetime of emotional constipation_. obviously day6 kang younghyun ISN'T like this, but that's part of the fun of AUs isn't it? putting characters (people) into different circumstances and working out how they might be different as a result of that.
> 
> please do let me know how you felt, what you think, all that good stuff! <3 happy solstice, friends! I'm hoping to post one chapter tomorrow, and then two more on christmas eve & christmas respectively.


	3. pororo keychain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok everyone get ready to breathe a sigh of relief. but you gotta work for it first.

This, Wonpil thought miserably to himself, was not how he had wanted to spend his remaining time with his cousin and Younghyun.

Wonpil had woken up with a horrible wine hangover, the roiling guilt that had become a familiar companion in his gut, and disjointed memories. But he was clean and tucked into bed — all the usual signs of having been taken care of. Before, he would have lain in bed and let himself indulge in the foolish, warm thrill of it. Now, though, it only compounded the way his stomach hurt.

His nose hurt too, which meant he'd cried, but he couldn't remember what terrible things he might've spilt — only the low timbre of Younghyun's voice, the ghost feeling of calloused hands on his face. But that must have just been a wine-dream, desire given voice by Wonpil's addled mind. He could but hope, despair a sour pit in his gut, that he hadn't said anything too awful, that he hadn't made things worse.

Not that he knew how things could get any worse than this: Younghyun's glacial silence, Dowoon's discomfort, and all of it because of a lapse of judgement. Wonpil could barely remember what justifications he'd told himself, in Spain; they seemed so insignificant in the face of this encompassing, devouring sadness.

At first, he'd wanted Younghyun to yell at him, to shout or cry or — or hit him, if it came to it. But of course Younghyun wouldn't; Dowoon had given him such a look of horror when Wonpil had voiced that thought absently in the kitchen one night. They'd been alone; Younghyun had the amazing ability to just ... not be where Wonpil was.

"Hyung would _never_ ," Dowoon had said, eyebrows furrowing. "Not even if you'd, I don't know — I don't know, maybe only if you were trying to assassinate me, I suppose. But even then, he'd probably try to take you down without hurting you, because obviously you'd be possessed."

"Obviously," Wonpil had echoed, thoughts still far away.

Dowoon had given him a worried look and added, "And because he wouldn't want to hurt you."

"I wouldn't blame him."

"Hyung!"

Wonpil had sighed and turned back to his essay readings. "It's just consequences, Dowoon-ah."

"That wouldn't ever be a consequence." Dowoon had actually pushed Wonpil's laptop shut. "Hyung! You know hyung wouldn't ever — he —"

"I know," Wonpil had interrupted hastily, that vinegar rush of regret and remorse washing through his chest again. Because that was the thing, wasn't it? Wonpil had hurt Younghyun; he'd hurt him so deeply Younghyun couldn't bear to be in the same room as him, because he didn't want to hurt Wonpil back, still. "I know, Dowoonie, I'm sorry."

Dowoon's mouth had contracted in consternation then; under any other sort of circumstance, Wonpil would've melted at how unconsciously cute Dowoon was. Then, however, he'd just opened his laptop again and ended the conversation with flipping his notebook back open. Then, even though Dowoon had fallen grudgingly silent, Wonpil's stomach had twisted for the rest of the night.

Much like the way Wonpil's stomach was twisting now, in fact. He groaned and lurched over to the edge of this ridiculously over-large bed. Stopped in his tracks when his gaze fell on the nightstand: his jug was filled, even though he _knew_ it had been empty the morning before and he hadn't refilled it. Next to it was a glass of water, and a bottle of Corean hangover cure.

Wonpil drank the water and the mango-flavoured drink of regret, and only then let himself start crying again.

After that, things started shifting. Younghyun's distance became less standoffish and more polite. It was almost like how he'd been back at the start, when they'd all been getting to know each other, except that it wasn't at all the same.

Not when they had so much suspended between them. Two whole years of growing closer, of falling so far in he hadn't realised until it was too late.

Despite the thaw, Younghyun's politeness was also seeded with a certain awkwardness. A new tentativeness, even though he was only passing Wonpil the salt or ... or not vanishing out of the room they were both in when Wonpil wasn't paying attention. He wasn't quite sure how to treat Wonpil in the aftermath, as though he too were aware of this strange off-kilter deja vu. Sometimes Younghyun gave him a long look, as though there were a great many things that he was holding back — but that was him so much of the time, anyway.

As Wonpil had so often done, a wish fervently felt and buried so deep it was more instinct than fully formed thought, he wondered what a Younghyun unconstrained by duty and honour and his training as a Royal Guard would be like. He wondered if he would ever have come to meet such a Younghyun.

So the year staggered on into a close, with Wonpil drowning in his regrets and the neverending coursework. With hesitations and pregnant, uncertain silences where none had ever existed before. With Dowoonie doing his damned best to bridge conversational gaps that would previously have contained a teasing remark or three.

He'd come home from a night lecture one evening — the last one for the term, thank god — and was listlessly removing his boots in the vestibule when Dowoon's low, penetrating mumble caught his ear.

"— hyung's so tired and sad all the time."

Younghyun's voice sent a shiver down Wonpil's spine. He sounded weary. "I know."

"I don't really know what happened but ... are you still angry?"

In the silence that followed, Wonpil hurriedly shucked his boot and started working on the other.

"I ... don't know. No. I'm — tired, too."

"Tell him, hyung."

"I don't know how to." Younghyun sighed, sounding so defeated that Wonpil's heart, which had previously leapt, clenched within him. "I'm not angry but I still — and what can possibly come of this anyway, Dowoon-ah?"

Dowoon made an unhappy noise. "I just don't see why you're making yourself _extra_ miserable _now_."

"I —" Younghyun started, but what he said next was too quiet to hear.

"Try _again_!" Dowoon's voice rose. There was a muffled thump of someone stomping hard on the carpeted stairs. "Fine. Whatever. I'm going to bed. Shower's all yours, hyung."

Wonpil sat quietly in the vestibule until he heard their climbing footsteps pass out of hearing, until he was sure the tears that had started in his eyes had gone away.

*

Dowoon had got caught up with a stallholder, who was endeavouring to press some free tanghulu upon him. Wonpil watched with amusement for a few moments, before a game stall across the way caught his eye.

More specifically, the array of penguin-shaped prizes stacked on the shelves behind the stallholder caught his eye. Of course, Wonpil thought to himself, feeling a little smile curl his lips — of course Pororo plushies would be prizes available at only the Corean Cultural Centre's Winter Solstice Market.

He'd been invited by Dowoon, whose eyebrows had been furrowed with hope and concern, because "You've been so stressed out, hyung, come and have fun for a bit". And Wonpil had agreed, because — well, he wanted to have fun if he could, and he sort of did want to witness Dowoonie at work. And Younghyun, too.

Following in the royal wake from stall to stall, whilst also having the freedom to linger at the unexpected delight of the Jejudo folk song performance under the cupola of the Cultural Centre was turning out to be a very nice way to spend an afternoon. With the term over, there were no deadlines pressing on his mind; with a hot paper cup of spiced ginger tea in his hands, it was also a little easier to let the sights and sounds wash over and mute the humming wretchedness that surged whenever he spotted his cousin's loyal shadow out of the corner of his eye.

Said loyal shadow was now, of course, emotionlessly spectating Dowoon's attempts to politely refuse the skewers of candied fruit, along with his colleagues. Based on Wonpil's personal knowledge of these hyungs and noonas, they were all probably fervently wishing that their liege would just accept the damn skewers and pass them along. He'd never met a more ravenous horde of people.

"I'm just going to ..." He nudged Younghyun uncertainly, not wanting to interrupt, and nodded at the game stall. He hadn't been expecting to be followed, but Younghyun detached himself from the knot of guards watching Dowoon's back and strolled along with him.

"Oh," said Wonpil, shooting him a startled look. "You don't have to ..."

Younghyun shrugged, hands in his pockets. "It looks interesting. Maybe I want to play too."

Forgetting himself — or perhaps it was just that his better senses had been shocked out of commission — Wonpil said, "I think it's cheating if you play, hyung."

"Is it?" Younghyun stepped up to the stallholder: besuited, be-earpieced, with the mugunghwa pin on his lapel and all. Unexpectedly, the blank mask slid away and he smiled so charmingly that _Wonpil_ 's cheeks grew warm, even though it wasn't aimed at him. "Please resolve our debate, sir — would I be allowed to play?"

The stallholder laughed and handed a toy rifle over. "This one aims poorly; that's your handicap."

Taking the rifle and looking very pleased, Younghyun looked over at Wonpil, which had the unfortunate effect of turning that smile directly on him. After so long, Wonpil found himself thoroughly disarmed. Disarmed and confused. "Well? Which prize do you want?"

"I want to play too," Wonpil told him, mulish in self-defence, and turned to hand the stallholder ajusshi the ten pounds to cover his and Younghyun's three rounds each. Three rounds in which he managed to win a pack of Maltesers, a coupon to the ginger punch stall on the other end of the row, and absolutely no Pororo merchandise.

Younghyun had had more luck (or skill, probably) next to him. He'd acquired a sherpa hat in the shape of a fox, a tin of chocolate truffles, and was sighting carefully down the barrel of the rifle at something in the far corner that Wonpil couldn't entirely make out.

There was something about him, bent over the barrier, serious and still, that made Wonpil want to just ... look. And then Younghyun exhaled, pulled the trigger at the bottom of his breath, and the little number placard was knocked over.

The stallholder shook his head, smiling, as he came back. Whatever the prize was, it was _tiny_. "I should've had you shoot from further away."

"Hey, at least I wasn't aiming for the grand prizes." Younghyun straightened up and put the rifle down — there was a flash of metal, blue and white as a trinket passed hands.

Wonpil hung back uncertainly, unsure of what to do or say next. He didn't want to spoil this unexpected camaraderie; he didn't know how to make it go on. He was afraid that he would open his mouth and an apology would come spilling out, out here in public, when Younghyun was such a private person.

Perhaps he ought to — if Younghyun had already left Dowoon, perhaps he ought to draw him somewhere else, somewhere they could both walk away from if it turned out Younghyun didn't want his apology. If Younghyun really was just — just _trying again_ , per His Majesty King Dowoonie's orders.

He was startled out of his spiral by Younghyun's voice.

"Here." Younghyun had turned to Wonpil, and was now holding his hand out.

Wonpil blinked uncomprehendingly, before looking down, and — A Pororo charm. It was a Pororo phone charm, dangling from Younghyun's fingers.

Wonpil jerked his gaze back up to gape at Younghyun. Younghyun's gaze was steady and there was a — a look in his eyes that Wonpil had not seen in a while; that perhaps also contained something a little new.

"For your phone case," said Younghyun.

"Um," said Wonpil, eyes wide, and held his palm up. The charm pooled on his gloved hand, so light as to be almost undetectable. He stared at the three little blue and white penguin plushies in various adventurous poses strung together with tiny conjoined metal beads. The usual uncomplicated happiness that he felt when presented with Pororo-related _anything_ felt caught in his chest, like a waiting hiccup. "Thank you. I — but how ...?"

"You can't possibly think" — Younghyun curled Wonpil's fingers close over the charm — Wonpil almost jumped at the sudden touch — "that in these two and a half years I wouldn't have noticed all the Pororo _things_ that you have?"

"I — I —" Wonpil did have _some_ , but he was very quiet about it; it never seemed necessary to explain this one thing from his childhood, this juvenile clinging onto this tenuous connection with an ancestral country he was never destined to step foot in.

Now Younghyun was smiling a little at him, in that knowing, amused way that was so familiar and had been so missed. "You have a sticker on your laptop and a Pororo folder for your lecture notes."

In that moment, Wonpil wanted him so badly that he thought he might collapse under the weight of it.

Instead, he looked away and patted in his coat pocket for his phone.

Dowoon was buffeted up through the shifting crowd to them by Sergeants Jung and Yoon, just then.

"Did you win anything, hyung?" he asked brightly, still trying to play mediator as he had these past few months.

"Yes, as it happens," Younghyun drawled, and nodded at Wonpil, who'd found his phone in amongst all the things that accumulated in one's pockets and fumbled it out. "Wonpilie has it."

 _Wonpilie_ — his phone almost landed on the snow-dusted paving stones of the cultural centre's courtyard. Forgiveness had never felt so _light_. Wonpil had, of course, been in his parents' bad books before, but even after things had been put to rights he had never — never experienced this heady feeling, like he'd just broken surface after a long swim up to the light.

He let it settle in his chest, this burning ember: Younghyun had won this for him.

"Oh!" Dowoon sounded so glad, so surprised that Wonpil would've hugged him if they weren't in full eye of the diasporic Corean public. "Oh, well, take a photograph for posterity, Wonpilie-hyung."

"Here?" Wonpil asked incredulously.

"Preferably not," said Sergeant Yoon. "Lieutenant —"

"Of course." Younghyun snapped back into professionalism, but there was — he let Wonpil walk next to him, edged a little behind so he was shielding Wonpil from the press of the crowd.

Under the noise and good cheer all around them, Wonpil let himself whisper, worrying at the charms in his pocket, "Hyung, I'm — I'm sorry."

The pause that followed had Wonpil's stomach somersaulting; had Younghyun not heard him? Or had Wonpil perhaps forced the issue sooner than Younghyun wanted.

But no, Younghyun only shifted a little closer as a gaggle of schoolkids ran past. His hand grazed across the small of Wonpil's back; Wonpil felt the touch from the top of his head to the bottom of his toes.

"I know," Younghyun said, some strange, soft note in his voice, before moving away again when they entered the craftworks tent. He didn't say anything more; he didn't need to say anything more. He was poised and alert, in on-duty mode, but Wonpil thought he might detect a lightness in the way Younghyun held his shoulders. Like maybe he, too, was feeling the same giddy sense of relief inside.

Wonpil floated on through the rest of the market, all the way home.

Home, where later that night, Dowoon helped him take a photo. Or, well, directed the photograph taking in a way that suggested the beginnings of a tyranny that would be worrisome if Corea weren't a constitutional monarchy.

Posing in front of the fireplace, Wonpil found himself smiling wide as relief and joy and a bubbling, happy nervousness filled him, unable to keep his gaze from fixing on the point over Dowoon's shoulder, where Younghyun was sitting in the reading chair and smiling back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THERE I FIXED IT (where 'it' is admittedly a subset of a larger 'it' to be fixed in ... er. *coughs*)
> 
> yes this *is* the pororo charm in the photograph that is wonpil's profile pic that day6!dowoonie sees in chunmyeongok. will this pororo phone charm turn up again? only time will tell.


	4. Jae

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's STILL CHRISTMAS EVE HERE!!!! Jae at last!!!

"Who are you," Jinyoung said when he saw Wonpil, "and what have you done with Kim Wonpil."

"Ha very ha," Wonpil replied. But the happiness from the day before was still coursing through his veins, buoying him up. He floated past Jinyoung out of the station, where they'd agreed to meet. Just the week before, Jinyoung had made Wonpil commit to attending the gig Jaebeom was playing in some grotty club Wonpil had never heard of, south of the river.

"You like music," Jinyoung had said, and hadn't bothered disguising his worry. It was his way of apologising too. "It'll take your mind off — off things."

"Things," Wonpil had parroted sadly, before sighing an agreement.

Tonight, though, all that seemed very far away. He put his hands in his pockets and smiled to himself when he felt the little Pororos against his fingertips.

"Absolutely not." Jinyoung caught him by the arm and pulled him close. "Pilie, you've been a miserable mop for this whole term. What. Happened."

Wonpil caught him up on the walk to the club, aware that he was bouncing and probably being entirely too cheerful for the gritty, grungey _vibes_ of this street.

"He _what_ ," Jinyoung was saying as he stopped Wonpil at an unassuming door and pushed it open to reveal some stairs leading down. "What kind of ridiculous Corean drama bullshit—"

"I think," said Wonpil quietly as he followed Jinyoung down carefully, "that hyung can't ... can't always say what's on his mind."

He thought about the way Younghyun's eyes had sometimes pinned him in place with their intensity, in the months before; or, the way he would other times bite his lip before vanishing out of a room. He thought perhaps Younghyun did know how to express himself and very much wanted to, but — couldn't.

"Oh, for gods' sake," Jinyoung said crossly. "This is still ridiculous drama bullshit, just a different genre. So are you going to go out or not?"

Wonpil paused mid-step. He hadn't even _thought_ — he'd just thought things could go on as they had before the summer; he'd been happy with that. He'd been _relieved_ to anticipate that.

"I don't think so," he said calmly. "I think this is good enough."

"Wonpilie, we're in the 21st century, not mediaeval Europe. Chivalric romance is no longer a thing."

Not knowing quite how to respond — for all that their private troubles had been resolved, there still remained the edict, and Younghyun's duty, and everything else — Wonpil just shrugged.

After staring round-eyed at Wonpil for a long moment, Jinyoung threw his hands up in the air and turned to finish trotting down the stairs. "I give up! I — oh, Jaebeom-hyung."

"Hi." Jaebeom greeted Jinyoung with a side-hug once Jinyoung got to the foot of the stairs and gave Wonpil a smile. "Thanks for coming. They're my guests," he said to the bouncer. "No cover."

"Oh no. No no, I'll pay, it's okay." Wonpil fumbled his wallet out.

"Keep it, love," said the bouncer, and _pat him on the head_. "You'll have to pay for coat check. ID first, please."

Jinyoung was totally laughing at him as they went into coat check. Wonpil pouted.

"You're so small," said Jaebeom, who was also smiling. "That's why."

"I am _not_ —"

"—compared to him, you are." Jinyoung caught Wonpil's hand, which is how Wonpil knew they were all right after that little fit on the stairs. "Don't pout, Pilie, it makes you look even younger."

After all things logistical had been sorted out, Jaebeom led them into the club — there was a main floor, and the DJ booth up on a podium at the far end, bathed in pink LED lights. It was fairly crowded for a Thursday night, people bopping around to the music on autoplay, drinks in hand, their chatter contributing to the low din.

"There's someone I think you'd get on with, Wonpil," said Jaebeom. "Over here."

 _Over here_ was the end of the long bar, closest to the DJ booth, where a lanky Corean man was sitting on a stool, looking out over the dancefloor. The strobing lights glanced off his oversized spectacles.

"Jaehyung-hyung," called Jaebeom when they were within hearing distance. "This is Jinyoung, my boyfriend" — Jinyoung totally, revoltingly preened — "and Jinyoungie's best friend, Wonpil."

Jaehyung perked up, looking at them curiously. In Corean, he asked, "Ah, you're from Corea too?"

"No, I'm British," said Jinyoung in his _thickest_ satoori, because he was a wicked man. Jaehyung's face in response was spectacular. "But my family is from near Busan."

"I can hear that," Jaehyung said drily.

"So is mine," Wonpil said, and — he could see Jinyoung's point, really, because the doubletake that Jaehyung did was really quite enjoyable. "But um, I don't know. I don't have the accent. I wish I did. What should we call you, Jaehyung...nim?"

"Hyung's fine," Jaehyung said in English. "As is English. I also go by Jae to friends."

" _Are_ we friends?" Jinyoung slid onto the stool next to him and leaned in interestedly, because he _was_ terrible and liked _flustering strangers_.

Jaehyung — Jae blinked at Jinyoung and leaned back a little, looking up at Jaebeom. "Er, I guess if you're friends with Jaebeom ... I'm low on dongsaeng here, anyway. You can all be my dongsaeng."

"Are you working here now, hyung?" Wonpil asked.

"Sort of. I have a residency at SOAS." Jae crossed and uncrossed his legs. "Bit of teaching, bit of research."

"Wow." Wonpil felt a little wistful, for what could have been. "That's so cool."

And on the other hand, there was Jinyoung: "So _that's_ how you and Jaebeom know each other."

Jae looked amused. "Yeah, we met at a department mixer and made friends over one of the professors going on about — what was it?"

Jaebeom shrugged. "I don't bother remembering every awful white person thing that's happened near me."

Jinyoung laughed.

"Anyway, Wonpilie is a composer too, hyung," Jaebeom announced, and went on despite Wonpil's protests, "and is training to teach children music."

"Wow," said Jae. "Kids, huh?"

"I'm training to teach too," said Jinyoung. "Kindergarteners."

Jae literally shuddered in horror; they all laughed, and Jaebeom excused himself to go prepare for his set.

"Jae," Wonpil asked when they had all got their first round of drinks, and Jae had gone back to absentmindedly twisting in his seat whilst watching the dancefloor. It reminded Wonpil of when they'd taken Dowoonie to Heaven, all the way back in their first year. "Is this your first time in a club?"

Jae looked over, startled. "What — no. Nooooot really."

"That's convincing," Jinyoung remarked, before going back to watching Jaebeom poke around on his laptop. Super boring stuff.

"But it's been a while," Jae admitted. "I'm busy."

"With research?" Wonpil asked curiously.

"Yes, and performances. Training, practice ... and this isn't really my scene normally."

"Oh. What — I can't believe I didn't ask sooner — what's your speciality?"

Jae grinned at him "Pansori."

Wonpil could _feel_ his jaw drop — but Jae was so ... so skinny! And modern! He had only ever seen pansori performances on the old recordings that Harabeoji had, and the master singers in those just ... they didn't look at all like Jae.

"Oh," he said dumbly. "Well. I suppose you can't be wearing hanbok _all_ the time."

Laughing, Jae shook his head. "No, are you kidding me? Do you know how hard it is to go pee in those?"

"So hard," lamented Wonpil. "I had to put one on when I was younger, for an entire pansori performance my harabeoji took me to, and it was _agonising_."

"They performed the whole _madang_?" Jae asked. "The entire song cycle?"

"Yes, or — well. I don't know. It was _hours_ and I barely understood any of it, because it was all in old timey Corean, and the sounds were so — so _different_ — though of course I have better ears now —"

"Of course," Jae agreed; the look on his face, which had been well on its way to defensive, relaxed. "Do you remember which one it was?"

"Um," said Wonpil. "It sounded a bit like — and I'm _so sorry_ —"

"Wonpilie," Jinyoung interrupted, "are you seriously about to sing some old Korean opera _in a grunge club_?"

"No better place!" Jae declared. "Pansori started out as folk music for the lower classes, you know."

"What?" Wonpil asked, and they were off to the races.

At some point Jaebeom started performing; Jinyoung wandered tipsily off to the dancefloor but Wonpil shook his head; this was _much_ more interesting.

In a calmer moment, with the reverberating, mutedly distorted trancey beats (Wonpil was never more aware of how specifically _limited_ his musical vocabulary was than at this moment; trying to discuss one musical tradition whilst listening to another), they both paused to sip their drinks.

"You don't dance?" Wonpil nodded out at the dancefloor, now fuller than it had been when he'd come in.

Jae snorted. "You don't want to see me dance."

"My harabeoji says as long as you move to music and have fun, it counts." Wonpil told Jae, feeling warm and happy with _two_ whole drinks, music, and good conversation. All the kirsch cherry and chocolate sprinkles atop the good mood he'd been coasting on for the whole day.

"Your harabeoji sounds like a kind man."

"He is! Oh, you should meet him!" Wonpil sat up straight. "I think he would like to hear you sing. He's the one who took me to the pansori."

Jae looked amused. "I'll let you know if I have a recital coming up."

"Okay!" Wonpil said. "But how, hyung?"

It turned out that Jae was apparently the sort of real adult who had _teaching residencies_ and _a business card_ that said Park Jaehyung, Singer (but a different word for it from just _kasoo_ ), and had an official agency email on it. On the reverse, he scribbled two sets of numbers.

"You have a _business card_ ," Wonpil marvelled. "Hyung, you're so cool."

Jae gave him a bemused look. "Man, you're a lightweight, aren't you?"

Wonpil frowned. "No I'm not. Look, I'm having a _third_ drink."

"Ah, youth." Jae laughed. "Now what were we talking about? Oh, right, modes."

Wonpil lost track of time a bit then — the night went by in flashes of comparative ethnomusicology with Jae; Jinyoung swinging by and stealing Wonpil, now much more pliable and willing to sway in place with him, to the dancefloor; swinging his shoulders and hips in time to the bone-thrumming beat of Jaebeom's music.

"I like it!" Wonpil yelled at some point, generous with his joy. Jinyoung beamed back at him.

Then they were back to the bar and Wonpil found himself swaying on a stool, giggling with Jinyoung over some already forgotten joke.

"Uh," said Jae, whom Wonpil hoped had been enjoying himself too. "Are you okay. The both of you."

"We've been worse!" Jinyoung said cheerfully, in horribly ungrammatical Corean probably.

Jae squinted at them, and then switched into English. "That does not inspire confidence."

Wonpil started laughing harder, and caught himself against the edge of the bar when the sudden, off-beat drop startled him. "Oh!"

"Oh, damn," said Jae.

"He's so cool," sighed Jinyoung, and then bit his lip.

"That was pretty cool," Jae agreed, and — Wonpil started laughing again when Jae raised his long, skinny arms and waved them about in the air encouragingly in Jaebeom's general direction.

"Okay." Jinyoung levered himself up from his seat as the music swelled. "I'm going to go make out with Jaebeom."

"Ew," Wonpil said.

" _What_?" Jae sputtered.

"He's almost done with his set." Jinyoung tottered a bit, before sucking in a deep breath. "I remember this ... this song."

"EXCUSE ME," Jae said loudly, but then Jinyoung was gone and Wonpil was now half-collapsed over the bar, giggling at Jae's outrage.

"Hyung, you're funny."

"Oh god." Jae turned back to him. "I hate being the adult. Hey, do you have someone you can call?"

"Call?" Wonpil perked up. "Yes! Call! Excellent idea!"

He fumbled his phone out of his pocket and shook it a bit just to see the Pororos dance.

"Is that...Pororo?" Jae asked incredulously

"Yes," Wonpil beamed, and clumsily hit speed-dial. Then he remembered to hold his phone up to his ear. Which was just as well, because he heard a click a few trills later and a rough, " _Y'b'syo?"_

"Hyuuuuuuuuuuuuuung," he sang. "Hyungie, I'm happy."

Younghyun made a funny questioning noise that sounded like " _whffleirluregh?_ "

Wonpil laughed. "You sound silly, hyungie."

"Th'fuck..." Younghyun abruptly sounded less muffled. "Pilie, do you need a ride?"

Oh. Oh, now _that_ was an excellent idea. "Yes! You're so clever, hyung."

A huff and a mutter Wonpil couldn't make out followed.

"Okay, where — ah." Younghyun yawned loudly. Wonpil wriggled with how it made him feel all warm and fuzzy inside. "Where are you?"

Wonpil turned to Jae, who stared back at him, perplexed. Oh. Wonpil repeated Younghyun's question.

Jae told him, along with "Stockwell, we're near Stockwell," and Wonpil repeated that too. Out loud.

"Okay." There was a low groan that made Wonpil blush a little, or maybe that was the alcohol? Both! "Okay, just ... wait for me, Wonpil-ah. Drink some water."

"Okay. See you soon, hyung." Wonpil hung up and looked at Jae seriously. "Hyung says I have to drink water."

"You sure as heck do, my friend," said Jae.

He then proved himself to be an excellent new friend. Jae procured a water bottle, watched Wonpil finish it, made sure Wonpil didn't die in the bathroom, helped Wonpil get his coat after no little confusion about which of his pockets Wonpil had put his ticket in, and then took Wonpil out to wait for Younghyun. It was a different bouncer this time, who didn't pat his head when Wonpil waved as they went past.

The frigid winter air cleared Wonpil's head a little, as they sat on the kerb and waited. And shivered. His coat was too loose. He missed Younghyun.

"How long—" Jae began asking, when the sleek, black embassy car emerged out of the dark and pulled to a hard stop just a few paces away from them.

"Now!" Wonpil announced cheerfully.

There was a pause next to him, but Wonpil didn't have time to check on his new friend because Younghyun was coming around the car looking fluffy and very warm. His eyes were also very big, considering it was so late and Wonpil had woken him up.

Excitedly, Wonpil struggled to his feet. "Hyung!" He cried, and fell over.

*

Younghyun had not, when he'd been woken up at 2am by Wonpil drunk-calling, expected to find Pansori Prodigy Park Jaehyung sitting on a kerb outside a random club in South Lambeth.

Judging by the open-mouthed stare, Park Jaehyung (a) also recognised him; and (b) was equally surprised.

But neither of them even manage to get out a "You?!!?" because Wonpil was lurching to his feet and promptly losing his balance.

Younghyun lunged to catch him, barely managing it.

Wonpil _oofed_ as he found his downward trajectory rapidly reversed and stumbled sideways into Younghyun's chest.

"I — uh —" Park Jaehyung's speaking voice was higher than Younghyun had expected. He also sounded slightly alarmed. "I swear, I made him drink a whole bottle of water before we came out here."

Younghyun shook his head and bowed as much as he could. "Thank you for looking after him, Park Jaehyung-nim."

In his arms, Wonpil made a sniffling noise. Softening out of the formality, Younghyun ducked his head and said, "Weren't you out with Jinyoung?"

"Oh" — Wonpil sighed and flailed a hand — "he got bored of me and Jae-hyung talking about music. Then he wandered off. "

Jae shuffled his feet awkwardly, and then shivered hard when a gust of wind blew by.

Wonpil, too, shivered. He tried to burrow himself further into Younghyun's puffy coat, turning his face into Younghyun's throat. Praying to _any_ listening deity out there that Jaehyung-nim was discreet — he had a very popular Twitter account, apparently — Younghyun eased an arm around Wonpil's waist and turned them towards the car.

"Okay, it's cold, let's get you into the car."

After pouring Wonpil into the passenger seat, Younghyun paused with a hand on the car door and looked back at Pansori National Treasure Park Jaehyung, who was still watching them with his arms wrapped around himself.

Younghyun had always been astounded — ever since the first time Park Jaehyung had come to the palace with Master Ro Jung Mi to perform — by how all that voice could come out of such a skinny person.

"Uh," said Younghyun, who felt that he couldn't really let a National Treasure back into a questionable club in South London. He could feel the jungle house music pulsing up its way through the pavement. "Jaehyung-nim, do you need a lift to ... wherever?"

"Oh!" Park Jaehyung blinked hard. "Y-yes, actually. I'm staying with some family friends in Kilburn? Is that out of your way?"

Younghyun shrugged. "I have a car, so what does it matter?"

"Uh, okay, I just need to get my coat and bag ... does Wonpil have a bag checked? He didn't answer me earlier... Wait, won't there be a problem if you park here for so long?"

"It'll be fine. Please wait while I —" Younghyun opened the door again, crouched down, pitching his voice low. "Wonpil-ah, Jaehyung-nim is getting your bag for you. Where's your receipt?"

"Oh, that's nice." Wonpil blinked slowly. "Um. Pocket...?" He lifted his hips to feel around in his pockets, frowning to himself in concentration. If Jaehyung weren't there, Younghyun might've given into his impulse to poke Wonpil's cheek teasingly.

"Is it with Jinyoung?" Younghyun asked, after Wonpil's face started creasing in something a little like panic.

"No, no, we checked our things separately," Wonpil mumbled, and lowered his bum to start poking around in the tiny pockets sewn into the fronts of his jeans. They were, in Younghyun's opinion, unnecessarily tight. "Ah!" He tugged a crumpled bright yellow bit of paper with A7902 printed on it out of his coin pocket and offered it up to Younghyun. "So it would be safe, you see."

"Very safe," said Younghyun drily.

Wonpil nodded solemnly. "Very safe."

Younghyun turned to hand Park Jaehyung the receipt. "Thank you for your help."

"It's no problem." Park Jaehyung took it, peering over Younghyun's shoulder at Wonpil, who was now half sprawled over the dash and fiddling with the radio. "Uh. Yeah, I'll be back soon."

It didn't take him very long to retrieve everything from the cloak room. Younghyun had only got back into the car, manhandled Wonpil back into his seat properly, and helped him pick the radio station (BBC3, of course) when Park Jaehyung emerged in a coat Younghyun could only think of as _padding_ and carrying two backpacks.

"This is classy," he commented as he opened the backdoor and clambered in. "From jungle house to orchestral music. Is that a flute?"

"Yeah. 's chamber music tonight," Wonpil replied, his words sticky and soft. When Younghyun looked in the rear-view mirror, Park Jaehyung looked endeared despite himself.

Satisfied that everyone was belted up, Younghyun put the car into gear and peeled away from the kerb.

"Can't say I dislike it. Like fresh air for the ears."

"Mmmhmmm."

When Younghyun glanced over his shoulder before shifting lanes, he noted that Wonpil's eyes were closed and his face was already going soft with sleep. Wonpil would probably be fast asleep by the time they got back.

"Jaehyung-nim," said Younghyun quietly, "do you know your postal code?"

"You don't have to —"

"— just call him Jae, hyung," Wonpil interrupted. "I do."

Younghyun opened his mouth.

"No need for all that Palace formality," Jaehyung-nim put in. "Jae's really fine. Or hyung? How old are you, anyway, uh ..."

"And _you_ should just call hyung by his name." Wonpil decided, thankfully not noticing that Jaehyung-nim _knew_ Younghyun was from the Palace before subsiding back into his stupor.

"Lieutenant Kang Younghyun, Jaehyung" — Wonpil stirred a little next to him, so Younghyun corrected himself — "Jae-sshi."

"That's a mouthful."

"That's _why_ I _said_ ," Wonpil murmured petulantly, "just say _Younghyun_."

"I'm fine either way," Younghyun assured Jae. "Jae-sshi, your postal code, please? Unless you just want me to drop you off near a Tube stop..."

"No, send him home properly, hyung," instructed Wonpil.

Jae laughed, full-throated. He laughed so hard he had to lean against his door and couldn't talk. So it was that they were already across the river and heading northwest up Park Lane when Jae finally found his address and read the postal code aloud for Younghyun.

A kind of lull fell in the car after that, the silence filled only by the engine humming and the swell and ebb of the radio. Wonpil had somehow managed not to fall asleep yet; his eyes were half-slitted as he gazed out of his window at the buildings blurring past and he was half-humming along to the radio. It never failed to amaze Younghyun, just how many different songs Wonpil recognised by ear.

"Should you be driving this fast?" Jae asked, when Park Lane blurred into Edgeware Road.

Younghyun shot him an amused look in the rearview mirror. "It's almost 3am. Aren't you used to driving in Corea?"

"Well ... yes ..."

"Actually," Wonpil piped up, presumably roused by voices, "hyung, I've been wondering about your English."

"... my English?" Younghyun asked, bewildered.

"Not _you_ , silly." Blithely continuing despite Jae's cough from the back, Wonpil said, " _Jae_. He sounds American."

"I was actually born in Argentina," Jae said with an air of recital, "and then my family moved to LA, but we came back to Corea when I was, like, ten? I guess that's why."

"Well, your American accent is cute," Wonpil pronounced, which was a bit rich, considering how every time Younghyun pronounced something the way he'd been _taught in school_ at the start, he got judgemental looks from Wonpil and Jinyoung.

"Thank you?" Jae sounded bemused.

Younghyun squinted at the GPS and then at the street he had turned onto: two lanes, lined with trees and identical terrace houses, lit at unhelpful intervals by streetlamps. "Sorry to interrupt. Please tell me which lane to turn into, Jae-sshi.".

"Oh my god, are we already here?" Jae turned to look out the window. "Shit, it's uh .... I think it's the lane up ahead. The left-turn."

"How come you don't drive, here, hyung?" Wonpil asked next, ignoring all navigational goings-on.

"Not the same side of the road," Jae replied; he'd leaned in between the seats to squint out the windshield. "Oh, Lieut-uhh, Younghyun, this one! I recognise that corner house!"

Younghyun made a hard and hasty turn left; Wonpil squeaked as he lurched into the door and Jae cursed in Corean.

"You're a maniac," Jae said, when the car rolled to a stop outside a house that didn't seem any different from its neighbours, but for the giant wreath hung on the door. "Thank you for the lift, but I'm never doing that again."

"He doesn't drive like this with —" Wonpil started, but Younghyun overrode him, "You're welcome, Jae-sshi. It's only because the roads are so empty, I assure you."

"Sure." Jae, unconvinced, slung his backpack on and opened the door. "Well. Get home safe. It was nice meeting you, Wonpil. And you too, Younghyun."

Wonpil looked away from pouting in confusion at Younghyun to say his goodbyes, and then Jae was slamming the door shut, and Younghyun did a very calm and pointed three-point-turn before getting them on their speedy way home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **OMAKE** : (cut from the draft)  
> Dowoon was awakened by the noises of Wonpil tripping his way into the house and up the stairs, lustily singing something familiarly operatic despite Younghyun's best efforts to shush him. He was annoyed, but also sleepily glad that Wonpil had had a nice enough time. He hadn't heard Wonpil singing so freely in ages. He just hoped Wonpil didn't have a terrible headache in the morning.  
> ___
> 
> the idea of Jae singing pansori is so delightful. I can't even.


	5. O WONpil TREE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title is literally spelt the way the section header is in my gdoc. 
> 
> this is ... 5k? happy Christmas!!!! (it's still Christmas!!! it's ... uh ... CHRISTMASTIDE)

The run-up to Christmas was packed with engagements, because nobody ever considered the fact that one of their honoured guests was a student, let alone said honoured guest's long-suffering bodyguard.

And so it was that Younghyun came face to face with pansori prodigy Park Jaehyung within the span of forty-eight hours, albeit in vastly different surrounds: a reception hosted by the Barbican Centre. Correspondingly, he was no longer sitting on a kerb in a hoodie and jeans, but in a green and cream-gold hanbok, and in the company of a stately middle-aged woman in a boldly patterned shift and headwrap in bright colours. The effect was striking, especially against her dark skin. Presumably a colleague from SOAS.

Younghyun tried to suppress the faint embarrassment when Jae raised eyebrows at him. He was well aware of the contrast between his roll-out-of-bed self and his uniformed, coiffed self.

" _Pyeha_." Park Jaehyung bowed. "It's an honour to meet you again. This is Dr Ltifi; she's a lecturer in ethnomusicology at SOAS. Also, tragically for her, my minder."

Dr Ltifi laughed. "Jae has been a perfectly pleasant guest, Your Majesty."

His Majesty shook Park Jaehyung's hand, Dr Ltifi's hand, and after all the customary greetings (in English, out of courtesy to Dr Ltifi), said to Jae, "Lieutenant Kang tells me that I owe you my thanks for taking care of my cousin."

Jae did a politer version of the gape from the night before. Dr Ltifi merely looked dignifiedly curious.

Serenely, His Majesty continued, "In ..." he looked at Younghyun in question.

Younghyun, who was experiencing an emotion probably best described as suppressed hysteria, said, "Stockwell. South of the Thames, _pyeha_."

" _Oh_ ," gasped Jae. "Oh. Wait, wait — your _cousin_? As in—" he paused, clearly trying to figure out a diplomatic way to say _that giggly sot I propped up on a dirty kerb on Thursday night?_

"Wonpilie-hyung is the grandson of Prince Buyeong," said Dowoon, who never quite managed to be His Majesty when his Wonpilie-hyung was involved. "My great-uncle."

"Prince Buyeong's grandson," Jae repeated hollowly.

"Oh," said AP Ltifi, "Prince Buyeong is a great patron of the arts. He did mention that his grandson played the piano, over canapés. Didn't he convene that seminar last year, at which we first met, Jae?"

"Yeah, Buyeong _daegam-mama_ did. Some cultural outreach thing," said Jae, still visibly reeling. He was with staring at Younghyun in a way that indicated he remembered all too clearly how Wonpil had clung to him. "Wow. okay. Uh. It was ... my pleasure?"

Dowoon smiled, a little too mischievously than was proper, but who was Younghyun going to tell? Younghyun was too busy silently imploding. "I'm sure it wasn't, but thank you anyway."

"I think Young — Lieutenant Kang did most of the work, to be honest. Uh. Dr Ltifi," Jae turned to her slightly, "I'm sorry, it's just ... Jaebeom's gig the other day. That's what we're talking about."

"Oh, I see!" And Dr Ltifi looked like she really did. Until she said: "His work with sound architecture is very interesting."

"I know Jaebeom-sshi," said Dowoon. "But he's never mentioned ... sound architecture? I must ask him."

It was Jae's turn to look like his mind was imploding again. He looked at Younghyun imploringly, but it wasn't really Younghyun's place to speak.

"SOAS is hosting a mini-conference with talks on the very subject early next year, actually, Your Majesty," said Dr Ltifi. "We'd be delighted if you wanted to attend."

"I'm performing at that one," Jae said. "I think?"

"Yes," Dr Ltifi smiled. "On the rooftop of the Brunei Gallery. I think we all learnt our lesson after the first time."

"Won't it be too cold?" Dowoon asked, rightfully concerned for the Nation's Treasure's vocal chords.

"As long as I wrap up ..." Jae shrugged. "What will Master Ro do to me from Corea if she sees me wear a muffler with my hanbok, anyway?"

"Maybe Prince Buyeong will make it up for that too, then," said Dowoon. "He likes pansori."

Jae abruptly looked very entertained. "Yes, and maybe also Wonpil." His eyes cut to Younghyun. "If it won't be too cold for _him_."

Younghyun shifted his weight. He could feel the heat creep up his neck, despite himself.

Wonpil's happy drunk weight against him the other night had felt, conversely, like an unburdening; he'd felt a lightening, like a muffling snow of deep winter had slid off the roof of his soul. It was then — not at the fair when he'd made that impulsive decision to stop punishing the both of them and followed Wonpil, nor in the press of the crowds absorbing Wonpil's quiet, honest, sober apology; nor later that night in front of the fireplace — it was then. When Wonpil had tucked his cold nose into the Younghyun's unscarved neck, falling right back into happy trust, truth had struck like a bell ringing clear and sweet with anticipatory nostalgia: Wonpil's happiness made himself happy.

"Wonpil- _daegam_ might have other commitments," Younghyun said as evenly as he could. Jae didn't look like he bought it at all.

"I might, too," admitted Dowoon. "But I will ask my staff to keep a look out for the invitation."

"I'll make sure we send one to the embassy," said Dr Ltifi.

And then it looked like the very rich Brazillians wanted to talk to Dowoon — they had been hovering conspicuously for a while now, so Younghyun gave him a nudge and Dowoon did the thing where he disengaged courteously from a conversation. Horribly, Jae _waggled his eyebrows_ at Younghyun as he and Dr Ltifi took their leave.

Younghyun had this terrible premonition this would not be the last he would see of Pansori Prodigy National Treasure Park Jaehyung for a while yet.

*

"Hyung, we met your club saviour," Dowoon announced, as he made his way over to the sofa. "Jaehyung-sshi."

"You met Jae?" Wonpil sat up from where he'd been curled into the corner of the sofa staring into space. As he sometimes did. His face had gratifyingly lit up when Younghyun had followed Dowoon into the sitting room. "Did you like him?"

Younghyun laughed a little and shook his head when Wonpil furrowed his brows. "That's ... not the usual ... question people ask when _pyeha_ meets someone."

"Well," said Wonpil, frowning, "I'm not asking _His Majesty King Dowoon_ , am I? I'm asking _Dowoonie_."

"True." Younghyun went to go stoke the fire a little more.

"I do like Jaehyung-nim," said Dowoon. "Especially since he apparently saved you from being kidnapped off the streets of South London, hyung."

"Oh for goodness' sake," said Wonpil crossly. "Kang Younghyun, why are you so paranoid? And must you infect Dowoonie so?"

"It's my job." Younghyun poked at the coals. "Especially since you won't let any of us follow you, however discreetly."

He turned around and smiled a little at Wonpil's dissatisfied moue. The shadow escort Wonpil'd gained in the first two years had been stepped down just in time for all the paparazzi/netizen furore to hit. They'd thought about putting it back in place until Wonpil got wind of it and put his foot down. Wonpil was going to be the death of him one day.

"It's an honour, you know, to have had Park Jaehyung look after you." Dowoon lay down on the sofa and put his head in Wonpil's lap. An effective distraction; Wonpil immediately started petting his hair. "I'm pretty sure there's a select group of Coreans who would be very jealous."

"What?" Wonpil sounded confused. "Why?"

"He's like ..." Dowoon cast about for an analogy that might make sense to those who hadn't been brought up in the halls of Gyeongbokgung. "EXO. They're very popular, I am told. So is Jaehyung-sshi. He's made pansori more attractive to the youth."

There was something singularly ironic about Dowoon, a literal youth of twenty himself, talking like this.

"Oh." Wonpil furrowed his brows. "Yes, I think one of my baby cousins on mum's side is in love with them. There are very many of them, aren't there?"

Younghyun had to put down the poker, he was laughing so hard.

*

Wonpil, in the way he had when he took to someone, decided that he wanted to invite Jae over for their own Christmas party. On Christmas day itself, because Dowoon had yet another engagement and Jinyoung, whom Wonpil had invited to come back, had a party of his to attend.

After all this time, he managed to remember to let Younghyun know in advance.

"Oh, Jaehyung-nim?" Younghyun looked up from where he was quickly slicing courgettes. They were having jjigae for lunch. "Sure."

"That's odd. You sound very relaxed." Wonpil folded his elbows atop the long wooden table in the kitchen and rested his cheek on his forearms.

Younghyun looked back down at the chopping board and resumed chopping. "He's been to the Palace several times, for performances."

"Mmmmmm."

When Younghyun chanced a glance at him, he looked flushed and sleepily content, eyes slitted and cheek squished against the soft grey cotton of his hoodie — the same one he'd been wearing when they'd first met.

"Are you going to fall asleep here, Wonpil-ah?"

"It's comfortable here," Wonpil murmured. "Warm. I like listening to you cook."

Finishing up the last courgette, Younghyun reached for the mushrooms. "This sound?"

"Yeah. And you hum, sometimes."

Younghyun paused. "Do I?"

"Mmhmm." Wonpil's eyelashes were thick where they fluttered against the tops of his cheeks as he blinked. "Sometimes you hum what I've been playing. 's cute."

"I'm very cute," Younghyun agreed, and then glanced reflexively around even though he knew none of the Guard nor Dowoon were anywhere remotely nearby.

It was worth it to hear Wonpil's laugh, though, the burbling giggle and helpless hiccup.

"I wish I recorded that."

Younghyun went back to slicing the mushrooms. "Perish the thought."

The smile Wonpil gave him was so sweet that Younghyun — Younghyun could feel his face doing the thing that made Dowoon's eyebrows squinch and Sungjin look off into the middle distance.

"Never," Wonpil mumbled, and buried his face back into his arms..

*

Even, Wonpil thought to himself as he undid the latch, the quality of the bell being rung held some nervousness to it.

"Hi, Jae," he said as the door swung open to reveal Jae, fidgeting on the stoop in the dark and bearing presents. "There really isn't any need to be nervous."

Jae let out a vaguely hysterical laugh. "Didn't know I'd been at drinks with _a hidden prince_."

"Crouching tiger, hidden prince," Wonpil replied, full of nonsensical good humour (or: wine that had been mulling all evening, liberally doctored by _someone_ , and half the box of mince pies Dowoon and Younghyun had brought back from the embassy).

"Who's the tiger?" Jae asked as he shuffled in.

Wonpil shrugged, taking a bag from him. "Don't know."

"Probably that guard of yours," said Jae, shrugging his coat off and so missing the way Wonpil abruptly flushed all over.

"He's not mine." Wonpil pressed his hands to his cheeks in an attempt to cool them down. "He's Dowoonie's."

"Do—" Jae stuttered to a stop. "Right. Cousins. Yeah."

"Yeah," Wonpil parroted, amusement bubbling up inside of him. "Here, this way. Everyone's here. Have you had dinner? I know I said it's a cocktail party, but there's always food about ..."

"I'm fine, thanks, I had dinner earlier." Jae followed him through to the sitting room, looking curiously all about himself.

"It's like some of the older halls, except ... not converted," he said.

Wonpil smiled. "Jinyoungie stayed in John Tovell in first year, I know what you mean."

"Isn't it weird?" asked Jae, just as they entered the sitting room.

"Everything's weird," said Jinyoung sardonically. "Hi, Jae. Welcome to the weirdness."

With Jae palpably stunned right next to him, Wonpil saw the sitting room that had become so dearly familiar over the years with fresh eyes: it was large and higher ceiling'ed than most flats that normal people lived in. There was the actual, working fireplace; the brocaded curtains that had come with the house; the antique furniture mostly clustered about said fireplace. It must be strange for Jae to go from a narrow, Victorian terrace house to this — a grand old townhouse in Belgravia, probably Grade I listed, containing His Majesty and an actual Royal Christmas tree.

He was reminded, a little, of the feeling of stepping through a curtain whenever they had gone down to Bognor to visit with his grandparents over the summer, as a child. The feeling of having been transported from their normal lives in Reading into some sort of magical storybook land.

"It's okay," Wonpil pat Jae on the arm. "You'll get used to it, hyung."

"That might be worse." Sungjin, curious about a new person, had come over from examining the Christmas tree. _He_ evidently recognised Wonpil's guest, because he switched promptly into Corean. "Hello. It's a pleasure to meet you in person, Park Jaehyung-nim. My noona's a fan."

Huh. Maybe Dowoonie was right, about Jae being like the pansori equivalent of EXO.

"This is Sungjin...hyung," said Wonpil. He was the only one Jae hadn't met yet. "He's Younghyun-hyung's eating friend."

"I'm also, more pertinently, at Central Saint Martin's," Sungjin said drily. "Fashion design."

Jae gave Sungjin a very obvious once-over, taking in the billowy black clothes he had really committed to in the past year along with the perennial manbun. "Sungjin-sshi. Nice to meet you. Grateful for your noona's support. I'm doing a fellowship at SOAS now."

"Is that all research and ..." Sungjin glanced at Wonpil. "Networking?"

Laughing, Jae shook his head. "No — well — _Wonpil_ was entirely an accident, though my manager-hyung did tell me this would be good for networking. There's a teaching component to the fellowship as well. I'm giving a series of lectures and performances."

"Oh, thank goodness," said Sungjin, "another real adult."

There was a pause. "That might be stretching it." Jae smiled quizically.

"Compared to this lot?" Sungjin snorted. The regal shine had well and truly worn off for him. "You'll see."

" _Anyway_ ," Wonpil steered Jae around. Dowoon had come forward to say hello; Younghyun, who had eaten _two_ dinners _and dessert_ at the King's Arms earlier, was currently making like a beached whale in his armchair and merely waved. "And you've already met Dowoonie and Younghyun."

" _Pyeha_ , I'm sorry for imposing on your Christmas," said Jae with a formal bow in Dowoon's direction.

"Nonsense." Wonpil waved him off. "I'm the one who invited you, and it's _my_ Christmas party."

Jae looked at Dowoon.

Dowoon gave him a faint smile. "Welcome to London, Jaehyung- _nim_."

"Oh my goodness." Wonpil flung an arm around Dowoon and shook him. "Just call him Jae, Dowoonie."

Jae's face did something funny.

"Get used to it," Sungjin advised Jae, which really was top advice. "Want a drink?"

"Hyung mixes strong drinks," Wonpil told Jae.

"Why is it," Jae said, "that two out of two times we have met, you are less than sober?"

Wonpil paused and took stock. All right, so maybe gravity wasn't quite exerting the same effect it usually did, and he was feeling much more liable to climb into Younghyun's lap — but that's why he was on _this side of the room_ and clinging onto Dowoon instead. The mulled wine had not been mulling for long enough, apparently. And the slug of port that _someone_ (Jinyoungie) had added in after probably wasn't helping.

"It _is_ the holiday season, Jae-sshi," said Sungjin.

"It used to be worse than this," Younghyun called.

"We were," Jinyoung affirmed. "Anyway, aren't things wilder in Corea?"

"My body," sniffed Jae, "is a temple."

"So you don't want a drink?" asked Sungjin.

"Oh no, please, give me a drink."

"Excellent." Wonpil beamed at the both of them. "Everyone should have a drink. Especially us teachers."

"There are so many teachers here, aren't there?" Jinyoung observed. "Now with Jae."

"I don't actually know how to teach," said Jae, "so everyone's going to be a little fucked."

"Well, my mentor does say that the first form any new teacher has is essentially fucked." Jinyoung looked into his glass. "So it's just as well mine are tiny and have more time to be fixed, after."

"That's ... horrifying."

"Jinyoung often is." Younghyun sounded archly fond; he really was in a good mood today. "Don't mind him, Jae ... hyung."

Wonpil let Dowoon pull him back over to the fireplace and sat down on the arm of Younghyun's armchair.

"Oi," said Jinyoung lazily. He'd occupied the other armchair; Jaebeom was apparently performing at some sort of Christmas club night and had sent his regrets.

"It is the truth." Wonpil leaned into the little space between Younghyun's shoulder and the squashy back of the armchair. "To be fair."

"I'm sure you're not fucking up your students, Wonpil-ah."

Jae, who was nursing some sort of clear drink that Sungjin had poured for him and now sat in front of the fire, half-gazing into it with fascination, looked up at them. He looked faintly amused, and mostly curious. "Is it just me, or are teenagers just incomprehensible? It's not even like it was that long ago for me, but ..."

"Oh, the stories I could tell," laughed Wonpil.

Dowoon perked up. "Tell him about them short-circuiting the whole building, hyung."

"They did _what_ ," said Jae, while Younghyun muttered something probably uncomplimentary under his breath in Corean.

Neither Sungjin nor Jae having been privy to the unique (or possibly the not-so-unique) challenges of teaching at --ford, Wonpil polished off his glass, put it into Younghyun's ready hand, and launched into the telling of the tale.

A while later — _quite_ a while later, after many stories from Wonpil and Jinyoung, Sungjin's exasperated retellings of the exploits of his young flatmate (some sort of style idiot savant from Thailand), and Jae answering questions like "did you really have to destroy your vocal chords" (sort of) and "did Master Ro really make you stand under a waterfall" (no) and "do you understand all that old timey Corean, _really_ " (yes, I have to) — the room was getting rather swimmier and Younghyun had been displaced by Dowoon in the armchair.

Dowoonie, Wonpil decided, was perfectly lovely, but not as comfortable a shoulder to lean his weight against.

"More buttered whiskey?" Sungjin was asking Jae, holding out the bowl of spiced butter someone had retrieved from the kitchen at some point.

Jae shook his head. "Dongwook-hyung is going to have to pour me into a cab at this point."

"Who...?"

"My agent. He's like ... my babysitter. Looks like a sad dog. A very handsome sad dog." Jae had slowly melted from his straight-backed seat to a long-limbed sprawl, and was taking up all the carpet space in front of the fireplace like one of those tall whippet dogs.

Dowoon laughed. "Jae-sshi, I think that you should take the guest bedroom tonight."

"Oh my god." Jae rolled onto his back. "What is happening."

"You're drunk." Sungjin nudged him in the side with a festively socked toe. "Either you sleep in a bed or under that shedding tree."

" _Is_ that tree new?" Jinyoung was sitting next to it, in fact, having decided that it smelt too nice to stray too far away from. " We didn't use to have one when I lived here."

Jae's mouth fell open as he curled around to look at Jinyoung.

"No, he's not a prince," Wonpil heard Sungjin whisper. "He's just a side effect of Wonpil."

Wonpil couldn't stop himself from laughing.

"It's new," Dowoon was telling Jinyoung solemnly. "My coursemate told me about this potted tree programme. You rent trees, and then they're planted properly in the ground when they were retired out of Christmas service."

"Oh ... you really are good people, Dowoonie," Jinyoung concluded in Dowoon's direction, also very solemnly.

It seemed to Wonpil that Jae would be permanently gaping around them. He giggled a little more.

"What's so funny?" Younghyun was suddenly next to him, holding a string of tinsel. He was, Wonpil realised, a lot drunker than he usually got. Mostly because he was draping the tinsel around Wonpil like a scarf.

"Um, hyung?" Wonpil murmured uncertainly, tugging the scarf looser.

Dowoon's attention was redirected. He grinned. "Hyung, you look like a Christmas tree."

"O Wonpil tree," Jinyoung intoned, and then laughed.

"I think we have extra decorations somewhere..." Dowoon stood and wandered off. Jinyoung followed him.

Younghyun collapsed into the vacated armchair and looked up at Wonpil.

"Pil-ah," he said. "That buttered whiskey is ... very ... a lot. You shouldn't drink it."

"I'm done," Wonpil assured him. "Don't worry, hyung."

"Good. It's really good, though. Sungjin-hyung..."

Sungjin, who'd been peacefully gazing into the fire with Jae, turned back with an eyebrow raised. "Yes?"

"Your buttered whiskey is really good. Can I have more?"

"Sure." Sungjin got up, just as Dowoon and Jinyoung came back with boxes.

"Hyung, stand up." Dowoon tugged at Wonpil until he slid off the armchair and was standing against the mantelpiece. Jae was now watching them.

"What is happening," asked Wonpil with hysterical amusement, a while into being held in place whilst his friends draped more tinsel around him and attached spare baubles to his general person. Even Jae had got in on it, having struggled to his feet to do so.

"We're making you a tree," Younghyun replied with perfect sincerity, and hung two baubles from either ear. He stepped back to survey his general effort. Under the dark intensity of his regard, Wonpil felt his ears go pink.

"We should ask Sungjin what he thinks," Jae said. "He's the fashion expert, isn't he?"

Sungjin had been the only one to refrain from partaking; he had taken over occupancy of one of the armchairs and was sipping at another mug of buttered whiskey, absolutely judging away. "I didn't go to CSM for this," was what he said.

Dowoon burst out laughing.

"Pyeha," said Jae." You know, my mother would probably cry happy tears to know you're having fun."

"Oh," said Dowoon. "Just call me Dowoon, hyung."

Wonpil would have given him an approving pat, if not for Younghyun examining his jumper sleeve. Presumably for tinsel-wrapping potential. Wonpil batted at his hand.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jae look down into his drink.

"Wow, Sungjin-ah, you sure mix strong drinks."

"Do I?"

"You do, hyung." Younghyun turned to face Sungjin, still holding onto Wonpil's sleeve. "Hyung, you never get more than just tipsy."

"I haven't found my limit yet, that's true."

"Sungjin-hyung, you're terrifying," said Jinyoung, who was nursing his mug of buttered whiskey still. Probably wise.

"No," Younghyun told him, "you're just a lightweight. You and Wonpilie."

"PRESENTS," Dowoon announced loudly, in a show of diplomacy. Or something.

Someone turned the music up even louder — Bing Crosby crooning away about winter wonderlands, despite the abject lack of snow this Christmas — another round of drinks was poured — and the sitting room was filled with the tearing and crinkling of wrapping paper, sometimes exclamations of delight and sometimes incredulous laughter.

"To protect your ears from the deafening tradition of brass excellence or whatever," Jinyoung said of the earplugs he'd got Wonpil, who had — as new meat — been saddled with supervision of --ford's brass band. The previous supervising teacher having begged off on account of the tinnitus.

"You're always complaining about the cold," Sungjin said to Younghyun, who'd unwrapped a squashy package to find a thick, tightly knit scarf that joined back in on itself, earmuffs, and long socks all in a matching, deep charcoal grey. "Wool's from the Hebrides. Got a coursemate in textiles to knit these."

"Hyung." Younghyun looked touched. "Thank you."

And then there was Jae, awkward, handing out presents for everyone with an air of apology. "I wasn't sure what to bring — just from my own stash — nothing so personal as —" he started, only to be bowled over by everyone's loud, tipsy expressions of delight at the appearance of _snacks_. Corean snacks, particularly.

"Oh," said Dowoon with delight, looking at his package of yakgwa, "they almost never let me have this. Thank you, Jae-sshi!"

"CALL HIM HYUNG," Wonpil shouted.

"Hyung?" Dowoon tried obediently.

"Uh." Jae looked hunted, the way everyone else (Sungjin; Jaebeom) did until they inevitably gave in. "Sure? Uh."

"I think you need more alcohol," Wonpil told him. "Loosen you up." He levered himself upright, and stood with a hand on the back of Dowoon's armchair swaying in place for a bit. But no, he was absolutely determined that Jae ought to have another drink.

It was at this point that Younghyun, whom he had absolutely lost track of, appeared by his side, He took Wonpil by the free hand, tucked a hand into the small of Wonpil's back, and tugged. Stunned, Wonpil let himself be swept along in stumbling, three quarter time.

"What the fuck are they doing," Jae could be heard saying.

"Literally dancing around each other." Sungjin's voice was a dry as a Siberian tundra.

"Hyung," Wonpil said, looking up into Younghyun's face, "I don't know how to waltz. "

"Hyung learnt court dances," Dowoon contributed loudly, "with me."

"Just follow me," Younghyun said; and there was such lightness and laughter thrumming in his voice that Wonpil couldn't help but give in.

It was an awful mismatch though; all Wonpil had ever really done before was bob along on a dance floor to thrumming electronic music and attempt slut drops for fun; not this swinging back-and-forth Younghyun was trying to lead him through; one step back and then out to the side and back, dips at the knee on every down beat at the head of the bar.

"Pilie," Younghyun was saying to him, "just _listen_."

"I'm listening!" Wonpil protested, and promptly tripped. He squeaked; Younghyun caught him and spun him out. Dizzy with the motion, Wonpil burst into hysterical giggles. Unexpectedly, devastatingly: Younghyun started laughing too.

"Why didn't we get him drunk sooner," Jinyoung mused tipsily.

Wonpil, still giggling in between stepping on Younghyun's feet, said: "Jinyoungie, don't you remember when hyung decided to march everywhere in the house for no reason."

"There was a reason." Dowoon was comfortably pretzeled up in his squashy armchair, happily apprehending the goings-on. Wonpil was going to make him dance together with Younghyun, next. "There was a parade. Also, hyung wasn't actually drunk."

"This is the weirdest Christmas I've ever been to," said Jae, "and that includes the time my friends didn't tell me it was a double date."

The song had long since switched over to one that wasn't even a _waltz_ , but Younghyun was prevailing. Possibly in some misguided, soused belief that repetition would make Wonpil learn how to waltz. In the end, Wonpil just stood on Younghyun's (slippered) feet, to be conveyed around the sitting room to the deeply unwaltzy Here Comes Santa Claus. They got as far as one circuit, before the pain broke through Younghyun's elated drunkenness and Wonpil was summarily displaced back onto the floor.

"How," Sungjin said wonderingly, "are you so bad at dancing?"

"What!" exclaimed Younghyun, pride unduly bruised. "Could _you_ do better?"

Sungjin, also tipsy by this point in the night, stood up and declared, "I can, in fact!" and pulled a hapless Jae up with him.

Wonpil collapsed with laughter into Younghyun's side, secure in the arm that Younghyun still had about his middle, at the look of alarm on Jae's face.

"I am a musician and scholar," Jae protested. "What is happening? Sungjin, stop!"

Sungjin did not, in fact, stop.

Sungjin was not, in fact, better.

Jinyoung sighed from where he had migrated to sprawl out in front of the fire.

"So much blackmail material, so little opportunity to make use of it."

Dowoon looked at him.

"I'm not going to," said Jinyoung peevishly, and peeled open another green triangle.

Jae broke free and threw himself down beside Jinyoung, seizing hold of the poker.

"Careful with that," Younghyun warned, some deep security instincts bubbling up through the drunken haze.

Just then, the most brilliant idea ever occurred to Wonpil.

"Oh! Oh!" Wonpil reached down for his best friend. "Jinyoungie, let's do the dance! Dowoonie, put the song on."

"What song?" Dowoon blinked, owlish with bewilderment.

"The sock slide song, obviously." Wonpil went over to his laptop, impatient. "Love Actually!"

Behind him, Jinyoung cheered as the disco beats and orbing synths crescendoed out of the laptop speakers.

" _What the fuck_ ," Jae whispered in very overwhelmed Corean as Jinyoung clambered to his feet and started shaking his hips in time with the beat. He was, Wonpil had to grudgingly admit, much better at it than Wonpil. On the other hand, the good thing was that one only had to be as good as Hugh Grant. Even Wonpil could manage _that_.

"It's from a movie," Dowoon was explaining whilst Wonpil and Jinyoung slid across the polished floorboards towards each other in their socks. "Hyung made us watch it yesterday."

"I know _that_." Jae sounded faint. "Oh my god, Sungjin, you too?"

"It's a catchy song," Sungjin was saying. He was ... doing something with his entire torso. Wonpil looked away.

" _Wrap your love a-round me_!" Wonpil sang along, flicking the tinsel wrapped around his shoulders in time with the syncopation.

Jinyoung careened into the chaise longue and flopped across it, laugh-singing the _oh baby_.

Wonpil spun along with the _I'll take you down_ s to see — Younghyun watching _him_. Younghyun was twitching his shoulders to the beat, bobbing his head like he couldn't help it, eyes creased and face still lit up with that soft laughter that'd been on his face the entire time they'd been waltzing around the sitting room.

With the hot beam of Younghyun's attention focussed on him, making his belly flip and his internal gravitic compass go even more haywire, Wonpil could not be blamed for tripping over his own feet.

"Hyung!" Dowoon exclaimed, at the same time Younghyun somehow, _somehow_ , even though also very drunk — drunk enough to dance with Wonpil and laugh in this way that made Wonpil's fingers twitch and his heart ache — managed to catch him. He put Wonpil down on the chaise longue next to a still-warbling Jinyoung.

"This is not what Dongwook-hyung meant when he said make connections in high places." Jae said plaintively, whilst The Pointer Sisters exhorted all of them to _Jump! Jump in!_ "Is it?"

"You made  _ this _ connection  _ underground _ , Jae," Younghyun said. He was leaning partly over Wonpil, one hand pressed against the back of the chaise for support. Heat burned off his body; he smelt of winter berries, spiced whiskey, and firewood. Wonpil closed his eyes, momentarily caught out of the merriment, and breathed in deep.  Like this, everything had the quality of a dream.

"Wonpilie." Jinyoung shook him. "Don't fall asleep, Eurythmics is coming on next." 

"Oh god," Jae said, " _ more _ disco?"

"Always!" Jinyoung stood and pulled Wonpil up with him; Younghyun steadied them both.

It was all in all, a very happy Christmas.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> honestly I could probably have written about 500 more words of the terror twink twins' 80s dance party ft. pashun bob doing ... whatever it is he does in a corner and lieutenant kang (with one more drink in him) dancing along.
> 
> \- [the classic love actually hugh grant dance](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUm2K6eDuMU)  
> \- this [golden oldie](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyTVyCp7xrw)  
> \- ty AS ALWAYS to bysine for all the lovely encouraging comments and mutual whooping. 
> 
> please leave an author some crumbs in the way of comments! christmas spirit and all that, you know. [retweet here](https://twitter.com/forochel/status/1343102511914356736) too, if you'd like.


	6. Train to Bognor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this and the next chapter were originally one part but it was getting too massive so ... I've split it up!

Next thing Younghyun knew, Seollal was impending.

"Mate, we're going on the lash next Friday night." Matt turned to him during a break in their seminar. "Celebrate turning in this monster of an assignment. Can you come along?"

Nadja of Russia, with whom Younghyun had a module again after two years, sighed. "He can't. I can feel it in my bones."

"Uh," said Younghyun, all of a sudden acutely aware again of passage of time, of the years having hurtled past, and a little sorry he hadn't managed to be a better friend to these kind, understanding people. "I would really love to, but it's the lunar new year ..."

More to the point, Seollal falling on a weekend meant that they were all summoned down to Bognor.

All meaning Wonpil and Dowoon, and so of course everyone on His Majesty's security detail.

"Jack will be there too," Wonpil pointed out to Younghyun, in some sort of attempt at comfort. "You know, noona's boyfriend."

Beyond the handful of times that they had crossed paths, Younghyun didn't really know Jack at all. But anyone who hitched themself to the formidable star that was Yeeun-noona would be equally terrifying, to his mind.

"I want ddeok-guk," said Dowoon to Younghyun, who was already messaging Captain Choi. Who had already been apprehended of the situation, it seemed.

It was a promisingly clear winter day when they proceeded through the VIP waiting area to the platform; the skies over Victoria Station were blue and freezingly clear. Despite all this, Younghyun's fellow guards were under their impassive facades all rather excited about being given an excuse to have a seaside holiday.

"Don't they understand that it's mid-winter?" Wonpil whispered. "Doesn't anyone understand that it will invariably turn out to be cold, rainy, and miserable?"

"The forecast looks clear, Wonpil-daegam," said Sergeant Yoon bracingly. "Take hope! I'm anticipating seeing a different part of the UK."

Wonpil cast him a doubtful look. "Oh, the _forecast_."

"The weather" — Younghyun shifted to block Dowoon from the curious gazes of a cluster of hikers carrying enormous rucksacks and lethal walking sticks down the platform — "is hardly the least of our worries."

Because — not to put too fine a point on it — they _were_ taking the train, much to Dowoon's excitement and Younghyun's corresponding despair. Captain Choi had, upon Younghyun's protestations, told he was welcome to charter a helicopter if he wanted to, but then he'd also have to find the budget for it.

"Train!" said Dowoon cheerfully. Unsurprisingly, he was also unsympathetic to Younghyun's woes.

Wonpil, clearly overcome with fondness, cuddled Dowoon into his side as they walked. Flicking a mischievous glance up at Younghyun, he said in tones of at least half-put-upon excitement: "First Class!"

"Train's clear for boarding," reported Sergeant Jung over their earpieces, just as they got to the carriage door.

Younghyun put a restraining hand on Wonpil's shoulder. "Please let Sergeant Yoon go first."

"Is this really necessary?" Wonpil pouted up at him over his shoulder.

"Better safe than sorry," Younghyun replied, scanning the platform.

In the meantime, Sergeant Yoon had gone up the steps and was now gesturing for His Majesty to follow. His Majesty detached himself from his royal cousin and did so.

Nudging Wonpil, Younghyun said, "You go," and pretended he didn't hear the petulant mutter of _ridiculous_ as Wonpil went.

He shut the door behind himself and followed everyone into the carriage that had been reserved for their entire party: _the_ full complement of the Royal Guard, and the royal cousins.

Wonpil was standing in the middle of the aisle, surveying the carriage with his arms akimbo. He didn't look particularly impressed.

"There's just these armchair things and table settings" he said to Dowoon. "I'd thought there'd be, you know, a dining table and a sofa or something. Chandeliers."

"I'm just happy to be on a train," Dowoon replied, and settled down in one of said armchair things, resting his elbows on the round table.

Wonpil sat down across from him, after putting his backpack away abovehead. "Haven't you got trains in Corea?"

"Yes, but I can't take them. Not unless they're specially chartered."

"Oh ..." Wonpil sent a frown around the carriage, as though it were everyone's fault for getting in between His Majesty and his entirely unanticipated yearning for railway journeys. "Well! Well. I don't suppose you could —"

"Please don't give pyeha any strange ideas," said Younghyun.

Wonpil heaved a sigh. "You don't even know what I was going to say."

"I could guess well enough."

"Really?" Wonpil gave him a challenging look. "Then what was I thinking?"

Younghyun got the distinct impression that Captain Choi was laughing at him from his end of the carriage.

"It's okay, hyung," Dowoon intervened. "Really. It's harder for me to travel incognito at home."

"Exactly," said Younghyun with relief.

Screwing his face up, Wonpil made a moue, said, " _Fine_ ," and turned to the window.

Younghyun glanced around the carriage awkwardly. If they were in the house or just — alone, he'd softly plead, _Wonpil-ah_ , _don't pout so_ — but they weren't. Younghyun was suddenly very conscious of the amused gazes of his fellow Guards on them. It hit him against, what he would be walking into in about two hours.

Those assigned to perimeter guard were all to be put up in the refurbished coach house that _apparently_ Prince Buyeong just had in the "old pile", as Wonpil called it. But Younghyun had been allotted a room in the family's house proper. Which also meant that he would be in the same house as Wonpil's kind, madcap, terrifyingly perceptive family for an entire weekend with no escape. The _Wonpilie_ and _Wonpil-ah_ s that his tongue had become accustomed to were now too heavy with unsaid things, too dangerous to let loose around them.

"The circumstances in Corea are rather different, daegam-mama," Younghyun murmured, retreating into formality.

He was stunned for a moment at the speed at which Wonpil whipped around to stare at him, eyes huge and mournful and hurt; and then released from his shock by two things: the train jolting into motion, and Dowoon's tiny sigh. Oh. Oh, of course.

"Wonpil-ah," he corrected himself, going even softer. "Sorry, I'm not —"

"Aren't you going to sit down?" Wonpil interrupted, voice higher than usual. "The train's moving."

About a minute ago, Younghyun would've teasingly said, _Yes, but you're in my seat_.

Now, he shook his head. "I'm fine. I'll go sit down in —" He glanced across the aisle at where Sergeant Ok and Corporal Yang were conspicuously not eavesdropping. "Um, in a bit."

Wonpil followed his glance across the aisle and back, and bit his lip. "Right, of course. Well, you can sit on the arm of my chair if you want."

"That doesn't seem safe," Dowoon said.

"Well, neither's just standing about on a moving train!"

"I'm fine here," said Younghyun. "Thank you."

Heaving a sigh, Wonpil shook his head and reached out almost thoughtlessly for him. Once again, all too scaldingly aware of everyone's — including his captain's — focussed disinterest, Younghyun pretended to shift his balance, and thereby slid out of touching distance. Sergeant Ok gave him the hint of a smirk.

"Do you want something from your bag, Wonpil-daegam?" Younghyun said, before Wonpil could pursue his line of enquiry.

Wonpil gave him a look, but at least this time it didn't carry the same animal hurt as before. "Yes, actually — I need my laptop and notebook."

Dowoon heaved a deep, undignified sigh and collapsed in a very undecorous way onto his forearms, folded atop the table between him and Wonpil. "I suppose I ought to study too."

"It'll only get pretty past Croydon," Wonpil told him. "So you may as well, yeah."

So Younghyun got down both their study materials. And when Sergeant Ok came to relieve him, he sat down with his own coursework, listening with half an ear to Dowoon's soft exclamations about the fields and the gently swelling downs that they were beginning to pass through. He was distracted half the time as well, by the view outside as they sped through the South Downs, and by the general tensing whenever the train called in at a station.

Wonpil caught his eye across the aisle, one of these times that Younghyun had found himself gazing out of the window again and had to force himself to turn back to his laptop.

Smiling that sweet crinkle-eyed thing, Wonpil raised his teacup (the tea service had been brought in by Corporal Yang, earlier) and said in dirge-like tones, "It's pretty until it starts chucking it down."

Younghyun bit down on a laugh. "I'm sure it's pretty even in the rain."

"Oh, no." Wonpil shook his head and took a long, dramatic sip of his tea. "All the mud and fog and rain slamming sideways into you? Not a chance."

"Then I'd better appreciate it now, hadn't I?" Younghyun held Wonpil's gaze and watched as Wonpil's ears and cheeks started turning rosy.

"I —" Wonpil swallowed and hid in his teacup. "I suppose so."

Obscurely satisfied, Younghyun turned back to his actual work, only to meet Corporal Yang's raised eyebrows over his laptop screen. Fighting down a blush of his own, Younghyun resolved to not look up unless there was an emergency, and lost himself in his seminar presentation.

*

In the giddy elation of finding his way back into Younghyun's good graces, Wonpil had let the lessons previously learnt — the rude shock of Younghyun in hospital last year; Yeeun-noona's pointed line of questioning when she'd visited; Dowoon so recently dogged by paparazzi — recede. Younghyun's _daegam-mama_ had felt like an abrasion, a painful shock salved only by cool, unfeeling intrusion of reality. Because that _was_ the funny, competent Sergeant Ok watching them from under her lashes, and the big, tall captain who was actually Younghyun's _boss_ , watching them from the back of the carriage.

Dowoonie's losses were brought into sharp relief by these things — the unseen machinery that turned about his person suddenly becoming seen. The way the Guards — Younghyun included — all tensed and got more watchful whenever the train stopped. The way that Dowoon seemed perfectly at ease with all of this, at least until he caught Wonpil glancing uncertainly at Captain Choi, standing passively at ease behind Dowoon's chair, and gave him a sheepish smile full of shy chagrin.

It made him feel small and selfish to even think it, but Wonpil was abruptly very glad that _his_ grandfather hadn't been made King. He couldn't, he thought, have borne this corseted existence.

These thoughts he carried with him along the trip — possibly also because he was working on an essay about the socio-emotional development of children — off the train —

("That was too short," Dowoon muttered when the train called in at Bognor Regis and they all piled off onto the platform. He sounded so disappointed that Wonpil was half-distracted from his thoughts in order to give him a side-hug.

"Any longer and we really would've just chartered a plane, pyeha," said Captain Choi, who was standing behind their little knot and doing what Wonpil recognised from Younghyun as the security scan of the platform.)

— into the embassy cars driven by familiar-looking agents —

("What?" Wonpil blurted, utterly disoriented; he was used to being picked up by Halmeoni in her battered Range Rover.

Younghyun snorted. "Did you think we'd get the bus out to your grandparents?"

And then Wonpil, without thinking, smacked him in the side.)

— and then finally up the short, slightly-overgrown driveway to his grandparents' house proper.

"Wonpilie," his grandmother said with some surprise, upon opening the kitchen door (Wonpil having ignored everyone being all _proper_ and gone around to the side). "Where's everyone else?"

From where he'd buried his face into her tummy, he mumbled, "Front door, being wretchedly formal."

Halmeoni laughed and pat his hair. "Stop letting the cold in, Pilie, you know how the oven is."

So Wonpil let go of her and sprung up the stone steps into the warm kitchen, where there _was_ something roasting away in the oven and smelling heavenly, or maybe that was the broth for the ddeokguk, deepening in flavour on a back-burner. Or perhaps his mother's galbi-jim, which was definitely in a claypot on the stove, even if she was nowhere in sight.

Shedding coat, scarf and boots, he went to wash his hands and poke curiously at the stew with the wooden spoon that had been wodged in between a radish and a rib.

"Where's eomma?"

"Probably greeting our guests with your grandfather," said Halmeoni. "Or — no — I think she took the Rover down to the fishmonger's with Jack."

Wonpil perked up. "Jeon?"

Halmeoni smiled. "If she can find the right sort of fish."

"And is appa —"

"He's looking at our taxes in the library."

At this point, Younghyun knocked on the doorjamb, looking distinctly uncertain over Halmeoni's shoulder.

"Sorry to interrupt, Poet Oh," he said in that funny, stiff formal way he got, "but we were told to present these to you. From the embassy."

He lifted a couple of bags that Wonpil hadn't noticed before.

"Oh!" Halmeoni went over to him; Wonpil stayed stubbornly where he'd sat down on a kitchen bench. "They are too kind, up there. We don't really need these things, you know."

But she took the bags anyway and put them on the chair that generally was where things got deposited until Wonpil's grandparents felt like dealing with them.

"And is everyone else still here?" she inquired. "Your fellows, I mean. They've already done an _extremely_ thorough inspection."

Younghyun gave her a wry smile. "Captain Choi is with pyeha now, but everyone's gone off to the coach house."

"The _coach house_?" Wonpil asked; he hadn't even been aware that it had already been done up. "Wasn't harabeoji wanting to turn it into ... some sort of ... work room?"

"He changed his mind," said Halmeoni a little sternly. "Wonpilie, stop spoiling your dinner" — for Wonpil had been absent-mindedly tearing his way through the clementines in the wooden bowl nearest to him — "and take the young lieutenant up to his room, would you? Leave your bag here. We've put Dowoonie in your bedroom, so you'll have to sleep downstairs."

Sighing, Wonpil levered himself to his feet. "All right, all right." It made sense, anyway; for historical reasons, an anteroom that probably used to be a dressing room led into Wonpil's bedroom proper. The Guards had probably pointed at a blueprint of the house and said THAT ONE in one of their meetings.

"Come along, young lieutenant," said Wonpil as he brushed past Younghyun in the doorway, tugging at the end of his suit jacket so that Younghyun knew he was teasing. "Let's go see what my bedroom usurper is doing."

"Sorry," Younghyun murmured slightly guiltily when they were going up the stairs. "About your bedroom, I mean."

Wonpil shrugged. "It's just for the weekend, and it makes sense. I always felt bloody awkward in there, anyway. Too much space for one body."

They had just got to the top of the stairs when Captain Choi came out of Wonpil's reappropriated bedroom.

"Oh, Kang, there you are." He turned to Wonpil, saying, "Thank you for showing Lieutenant Kang the way, daegam-mama," and gave Wonpil a slight bow that was thoroughly discomfiting from someone who seemed to possess spades more dignity than Wonpil himself.

"I, um, you're welcome?"

Captain Choi looked almost entertained for a split-second, before his impassive mask settled in place again. Wonpil sort of saw, in a flash, what Younghyun was trying to grow up to be.

"The family dinner's in two hours," he told Younghyun. "Stow your things away and come down to the coach house for a briefing."

He gave Wonpil another bow as he went away down the stairs, straight-backed and impressive.

"How on earth," said Wonpil, "does he know more about _my_ dinner than me?"

Younghyun gave him a smile that was breathtaking; Wonpil only _now_ realised how tense he had been before they had been alone.

"It's his job, Wonpil-ah," said Younghyun, and pushed open the bedroom door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im sleepy so no notes just please let me know if you enjoyed this; what you thought etc. <3   
> oh and [give it a bit of a boost on twitter](https://twitter.com/forochel/status/1350319144072314881?s=20) too if you like.
> 
> thanks as always to bysine for your lovely thoughtful comments that almost always make me go back in and add things for nuance and whatnot.


	7. Seollal in Bognor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> omnomnom + feels

With Younghyun gone to talk about Guard things with his colleagues, Wonpil took on showing Dowoon around the house.

"It's not as big as the one in Downton Abbey," observed Dowoon when they were in the solarium — a late addition after Wonpil's father and uncle had moved out.

"Well" — Wonpil rolled his eyes — "I mean, _yeah_. This is a _house_ , not a bloody _castle_."

Dowoon blinked. "Well, I didn't know, I thought perhaps chakeun-harabeoji might have ... uh ..." He trailed off in embarrassment as Wonpil's grandfather wandered in from the garden, carrying a shallow woven basket of courgettes nestled in among some heads of fat-leaved lettuce.

"From the greenhouse," said Harabeoji, "for the jeon."

"Wow," said Dowoon. "Did you grow that yourself, chakeun-harabeoji?"

Harabeoji beamed at him. "Oh, well, with a bit of help."

"There's a man from the village over the hill who comes and makes sure halmeoni and harabeoji haven't committed plant murder," explained Wonpil, dodging his grandfather's swat.

"I assure you your halmeoni is quite the talented gardener! Now come along and give us a hand with the mandu. There are so many to fold, and with Hyeyi at the market I'm not sure we'll be able to make enough for these ravening hordes."

Wonpil despondently followed in his grandfather's bustling wake. "But I'm rubbish at making them, harabeoji ... and I bet Dowoonie's never done it in his life."

"I haven't," Dowoon confirmed. But then the suck up continued, "But I'm happy to learn!"

"That's the spirit!"

They followed Harabeoji to the kitchen, where he summarily deposited the produce, Wonpil, and Dowoon, before disappearing back out the door. Halmeoni had been joined by Yeeun-noona, who was neatly pinching together two ends of a mandu.

"About time you contributed something," she said acidly as Wonpil washed his hands at the sink. Dowoon had already done so and was being given a tutorial by Halmeoni.

"I contributed Dowoonie." Wonpil floured his hands. "And you can't blame me if these all turn out awful."

"They won't be awful, Wonpilie," Halmeoni said absently whilst guiding Dowoon's fingers. "Because _you_ made them."

Yeeun-noona looked up. "Also, we'll just give all the burst ones to that guard of yours."

Wonpil, awfully, felt himself flush. "He's not — he's _Dowoonie's_ —"

"Aha," she murmured.

"Ugh," complained Wonpil, and applied himself to the mandu.

The repetitive motion of wrapping mandu lulled one into a therapeutic haze after a while: wrapper in the palm, likely looking spoonful of filling, the folding over, the sealing pinches, the contortion of the half moon into a round. Over and over, whilst the floured metal trays on the table filling slowly up with rows of moon-shaped and chestnut-shaped mandu. Wonpil wasn't sure how much time had passed before the kitchen door swung open and his mother bustled in triumphantly with fish in hand and Jack behind her.

"Oh! Wonpilie making mandu?" she cried a short while later, as she pounded away at the fishmeat. "Is this a birthday surprise?"

For Wonpil's mother's birthday fell very close to Seollal this year.

"Yes, eomma," he shamelessly said, and smiled sweetly at her.

Yeeun-noona audibly rolled her eyes; Dowoon stifled a laugh; Halmeoni didn't bother at all; and Jack was peremptorily summoned over to take over making the fish "become gluey" so that she could come over and give Wonpil a kiss on the cheek.

"Eomma," he complained, "you smell like fish."

"Mmm, it's so you have delicious food to eat."

"Hyeyi-yah," said Halmeoni, "could you please go get Junghoonie? We need more hands if we are to feed the Guards as well."

"Oh, shit," said Wonpil unthinkingly. "This is for _them_? But they all eat so much!"

"Well, this is more of a treat. They have their own provisions. But it's only proper, to give them some ddeok-guk too, yes?"

Dowoon, who'd looked up in shock, mouth silently dropping open, redoubled his efforts to be meticulous.

*

The mandu turned out quite satisfactory in the end. There was, in any case, no way to tell the difference between the ones made by Wonpil, Dowoon, or Yeeun-noona — or Younghyun, indeed. He had returned from his meeting and been immediately pressed into service.

"You will be bountifully rewarded." Wonpil shivered in his coat as they walked down to the coach house in the dark; their way was lit only by the diffuse moonlight in an overcast sky and the torch Wonpil was carrying. Younghyun, for his part, had the heavy responsibility of bearing the ddeok-guk (with mandu in). "With ... food. Are you sure you don't need a hand with that?"

"Very," said Younghyun tersely; he was concentrating very hard on not tripping over anything. "Just hold the torch steady."

They were received gladly (and Wonpil was also relieved to see that the Guards _did_ have dinner set up for themselves), and seen to the door with what Wonpil thought might be teasing for Younghyun, judging by the way his nose was wrinkling and he'd gone faintly pink. Not that Wonpil could understand a _word_ of the thick dialect Sergeant Ok was hollering in.

For all his pains, though, Younghyun _was_ rewarded very well.

Wonpil had stopped eating ages ago, full up to his _neck_ with all the goodies: the traditional spoonfuls of savoury broth, each mouthful bearing chewy ddeok with the sweet, mild fragrance of rice in juxtaposition to the mandu, tender bouncy skins that burst in the mouth with flavour: freshly minced pork rich and fat on the tongue, cut with jarred kimchi from the embassy; and then a smaller bowl of galbi-jjim over sesame-slippery dangmyeon; and then all spare corners of his stomach filled up with various eggy jeon, citrus-leavened fish and piquant perilla.

But Younghyun was still going strong. Wonpil would wonder where it all went, except that living with Kang Younghyun meant being intimately familiar with what required such fuelling.

Sleepy and sated, Wonpil leaned back in his chair with his hands folded over his straining belly, listening with half an ear to the ebb and flow of conversation around the table, watching Younghyun stuff two mandu into his mouth at once from under his lashes.

In this cozy state, with the wine he'd had thick in his blood, Wonpil was entirely unprepared for Halmeoni of all people to start interrogating Younghyun.

"— unlike the young lieutenant here." She turned to Younghyun — catching him mid-chew. He really looked quite cute like that, Wonpil mused fondly, before Younghyun's wide-eyed freeze woke him up.

"Not everyone's got that mad dedication, halmeoni," sighed Yeeun.

Oh, perhaps they were having another Pointed Discussion about noona dropping the flute after her first year of uni again.

Younghyun unfroze and chewed carefully, swallowing with a gulp.

"Mate, did you really start training when you were fifteen?" asked Jack.

"Oh, no." Younghyun shook his head. "When I was sixteen. International years."

"Like that's any better," murmured Wonpil's mother in what she probably thought was an undertone. Wonpil turned to look at Dowoon with concern, but it seemed like all that diplomatic tact utterly deserted _him_ when it came to family.

"And after graduating," Halmeoni was asking in that absent-minded, floaty way she had, even though _everybody_ knew she was still as sharp as a tack, "you ... became a Guard full time, did you?"

"Yes, ma'am." Younghyun had abandoned his cutlery in a move most depressing.

His parents were just not intervening no matter how much Wonpil tried signalling them with his eyes

She looked at Younghyun for a long moment, and then turned to Dowoon, who had been very quietly involved with his jeon. "It must've been nice to have your hyung with you, then."

"Oh." Dowoon looked up, mouth falling open a little, expression unguardedly surprised. "Oh, no, I mean — yes, it is, but that's not ... hyung had so much training to do, you see."

"I had to catch up,"explained Younghyun.

"I think I actually saw hyung not much at all, for a year ... a year and a half? After that. He wasn't training at the Palace."

Harabeoji was talking to Jack and Yeeun-noona still about the upcoming village reenactment of Persuasion, but Wonpil was certain he was listening with a keen ear.

"Oh?" Halmeoni looked genuinely curious.

Curious too, Wonpil turned to look at Younghyun, whose eyes slid quickly to him and back to Halmeoni. _He_ looked conflicted.

Blaming it on the wine Harabeoji had opened, and before that the aperitif Halmeoni had made for the occasion, Wonpil impulsively reached out under the table to grasp Younghyun's left hand.

"I'm afraid I can't say, ma'am," said Younghyun smoothly, though his fingers twitched against Wonpil's own and his knee absolutely jerked in surprise. "It's classified."

"Classified?" Wonpil asked, laughing a little. "Sergeant Jung bullying you into being better at taekwondo is classified?"

Younghyun's mouth ticked up a little in a corner, warming the tense, polite mask that had settled into place. "No, otherwise I wouldn't have told you."

"Hyung wasn't at the Palace most of the time, actually. Weren't you in Pohang?" Dowoon piped up, and gave Younghyun a stinky look when Younghyun looked at him with the _pyeha, no_ face. "I can say that!"

"Pohang," said Harabeoji, having decided to participate apparently. "Hmmm...."

Eomma said, "There's a Marine base in Pohang, isn't there? I remember stopping by for dinner on a family trip, when I was small. Wonderful seafood. We watched the sunset over the sea."

"That does sound lovely," said Appa slightly wistfully.

Younghyun's fingers flexed around Wonpil's, and then froze — as though he'd forgotten their fingers were interlocked. Wonpil squeezed back, hopefully comfortingly.

"There is still a base there, yes," Younghyun agreed, but said nothing more.

"Goodness." Halmeoni sat back in her chair. "All right, have your national secrets, then."

Good old Dowoonie intervened again, then. "Pohang's fairly near Busan, so that meant hyung got to come visit when he was on shore leave. That was nice. But hyung did sort of just disappear off even my radar for months on end."

" _Pyeha_ ," Younghyun whispered harshly; Wonpil had no idea why. It _was_ nice that Younghyun had had holidays when he was having all that training.

"I suppose that makes sense," said Harabeoji gravely, "all things considered."

Dowoonie, who clearly felt some sort of responsibility, said, "They did consider all the things."

There was a pause, and then Younghyun nodded. "Yes. I ... I had a lot. Of, uh, learning. To do. To better protect pye—" At Wonpil's warning tap, he swiftly corrected himself. "Dowoon."

"That's ... very noble," said Wonpil's grandmother, entirely opaque.

Younghyun shrugged, an equally opaque half-smile on his face. "I don't really think of it that way, but I am grateful you think so, Poet Oh."

"You really should call her halmeoni, " said Harabeoji; he was now watching Younghyun and — Wonpil startled — _himself_ , too, with sharp eyes from behind his glasses. "You've dined at our table now, you know."

Under the table, Younghyun's fingers tensed around Wonpil's own; over the table, he looked hunted. And then he looked to Dowoon mutely for succour. Wonpil was going to _smother Dowoonie with pillows_ later, because all Dowoon did was shrug helplessly back.

"Oh, _goodness_." Eomma put her spoon down and picked her wine glass up. "Oh, not _you_ ," she said to Younghyun, who'd looked at her with slightly widened eyes. "You just go back to eating, I know what you're like."

"Yes, _eomonim_ ," Younghyun said, but Wonpil totally could tell that he was relieved. He picked up his chopsticks again.

Realising, now that his brain had been scared into working properly again, that Younghyun needed both hands to eat properly, Wonpil tried letting go.

He hadn't expected at all the way Younghyun squeezed his hand hard, just the once, before releasing him. He'd expected even less, the way Younghyun let his fingertips trail against his palm.

Wonpil blamed the flush on the alcohol, and the shiver on the draughty window.

*

"I cannot forbear to comment," said Harabeoji when Wonpil was sitting with him the next morning in the solarium, "upon your choice of paramour. "

"My _what_ ," Wonpil squeaked. "Harabeoji, have you been rereading Austen again."

"Nothing dire, all things considered, he's quite —"

"— oh, it's that reenactment he's working on with his friends," Halmeoni put in as she passed by with a decanter of a dark red wine with a very intimidating sort of viscocity.

"Halmeoni, it isn't even noon yet."

"I'm letting it breathe for lunch," she said celestially, and drifted away. "We're having lamb."

"Oh dear," said Wonpil, who wasn't personally very fond of lamb. He hoped there were enough leftovers from dinner.

"Wonpilie," his grandfather tapped him on the knee. "Let us return to the point."

 _Let us not_ , Wonpil wished he could say. _There_ is _no point_.

Wonpil sighed and slid down a little in his seat.

"When I was exiled," the old man began, "and you must know that I had known it would certainly happen in my life, your halmeoni and uncle were the only ones I had with me."

Wonpil blinked. "Yes...?"

"All my friends from university and oh, all my various circles" — Wonpil wondered vaguely how it was that his grandfather had had so many friends in Corea, whilst Dowoonie seemed so alone — "... oh, they were all left behind. Not to mention, of course, my mother and older brother."

"Ah," managed Wonpil. Harabeoji had never spoken so directly about that period in his life before, nor his brother. Dowoonie's grandfather. He wondered what any of this had to do with — with Wonpil having a bloody _paramour_.

"Whom I do miss, though we weren't as close as you and Dowoonie seem to be." Harabeoji shrugged elegantly. "Small wonder with the lad, though. You have done well with him."

"Um," said Wonpil, flattered despite himself. "I didn't really set out to ... he's just adorable. And he was so _solemn_ when we first met, like a ... like a storybook character, harabeoji. You know."

Harabeoji gave him a warm smile. "I know."

"So 's not like I could've helped it."

"No, you are rather drawn to people who are lonely," said his grandfather reflectively. "All due credit to your parents, that kindness in you."

Wonpil squirmed under the unexpected praise, pleased and embarrassed in equal measure.

His grandfather looked hard at him for a few moments, before abruptly looking quite amused. "And they are drawn to you in turn, I'm sure." Before Wonpil could protest or say something witty or even react in any way, Harabeoji went on: "I'm unsurprised by Dowoon's character, really; his grandfather was quite shy too."

"Really?"

"Yes; definitely. I think all that king-ing was quite hard on him." Harabeoji looked solemn. "Oh well, that's all in the past now. And it was so much harder to stay in touch, back in the day. It was all letters and wires for emergencies, then telephone calls ..."

"You still get letters don't you, harabeoji?" Wonpil asked, thinking about the postcards that decorated Harabeoji's corner of the library.

"Oh yes, but we do email too, you know. Yeeunnie helped us do video calls too, with some of the old set. The miracle of technology, eh? Instantaneous communication! Or nearly that, anyway. We've reconnected with so many old friends."

Wonpil blinked at him, having rather lost the conversational thread a while ago.

"It isn't so difficult now," mused his grandfather, as he leaned back into his armchair and sent his gaze out the glass enclosure into the snowy garden. "You know, if you wished to speak to a good friend every day, even if they were thousands of miles away. Why, your grandmother's phone just goes off all the time now, with all her old literary circle back — in Corea. Bloody nuisance, that thing."

"I — " Wonpil wanted to say that he knew; he was in a few Katalk rooms with his maternal cousins who lived in Corea, after all. But it had come home to him what Harabeoji was trying to tell him. "I — um, but —"

"I won't deny it wouldn't be difficult still, Wonpilie..." His grandfather's keen gaze was entirely unfooting. "But if this is your choice, then there are ways and means."

Wonpil, who had exhausted his tea, busied himself with pouring himself another mug. He wanted to say be blunt and say, _Really Harabeoji nothing is happening; nothing at all; we know better than that._

But then Harabeoji would give him that eagle-eyed look and say, _We?_

And Wonpil — Wonpil would have no answer. Possibly he might start crying into what would undoubtedly be a sympathetic silence. That would be awful.

In the face of Wonpil's non-reply, Harabeoji said, "Have you heard of Katalk?"

Wonpil burst into surprised giggles. And in response to his grandfather's quizzical look, had to explain about Jae-hyung's persistent incredulity regarding Younghyun (and Dowoon) only using email, old-fashioned texting, and phone calls.

"Well," said Harabeoji, "that's Palace security for you. It is nice that you've made friends with Park Jaehyung, though."

"Yes, he is a fun hyung," agreed Wonpil, starting to hope that perhaps his grandfather had managed to be distracted.

"A very talented young man too, and very driven."

Wonpil nodded. They had attended Jae's rooftop showcase just a few weeks ago; it had been windy, grey, and started raining the moment after he'd finished caterwauling. Typical.

"As is," Harabeoji carried on, nodding at where Younghyun had just passed by outside, a sturdy dark silhouette incongruously topped by the fox hat he'd won at the solstice festival, tramping through the snow behind Dowoon and Appa, "that young man."

Sinking low into his chair, Wonpil took a fortifying sip of tea. "Harabeoji, we really aren't — there isn't —" He stopped and buried his face in his mug. Breathed in the fragrant steam for a moment. "We're just friends, honestly. He's just my hyung. _A hyung."_

There was a pause; here fell the sympathetic silence he'd dreaded.

"All right, Wonpilie," said his grandfather a little sadly. "I must have misunderstood. Forgive an old man his foibles."

"Harabeoji," Wonpil started helplessly.

But he was swiftly cut off. "Now, tell me, is that rascal Lewes still teaching at the IoE?"

Gratefully, because Harabeoji hadn't misunderstood at all and it made Wonpil want to go and throw himself into the snow outside, Wonpil nodded and opened his mouth to complain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SURPRISE Buyeong yenta-ing (to no avail). 
> 
> re: gluey fish: if you are not asian, then I am here to tell you that there are species of fish that have some magical quality (idk man idk science), so that when you pound the flesh ... and pound...and pound... it turns into a gluey paste. Add seasoning and flour et voila! fishcake!
> 
> if you enjoyed, kudos, comment, and [retweet](https://twitter.com/forochel/status/1352075129925341185) please!


	8. Critical System Failure

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a short one!

It was a long time coming, really, Younghyun thought.

Wonpil had been so stressed that he'd been evidently running on fumes, sniffling more than his usual sensitive sinuses warranted, and frowning about a tickly throat. But he refused to listen to reason — to take a day off even though Younghyun was pretty sure any future employers wouldn't count it against him — and soldiered on through the last few weeks of his term. 

So of course the moment Wonpil's placement was over, he'd staggered home from the last day to finish and submit his final report and woken up the next day with a raging fever.

Or, well. Wonpil hadn't appeared for breakfast at his customary time. When Younghyun had gone to rustle him out of bed for brunch, he'd found Wonpil tangled up in his blankets, sweaty and flushed and murmuring in sleepy discomfort. 

The natural reaction, of course, was first to take him to the hospital, and then in the face of Wonpil's feverish recalcitrance, to call the embassy. 

And so it came to be that Wonpil woke up from a nap to Doctor Yi, one of the embassy's panel doctors and apparently also a familiar face around his grandfather's parties, tutting in a very paternal fashion down at him.

"The dread lurghy, eh?" he said in English to Wonpil. "That comes of working with children."

"Mmmmmmf," replied Wonpil, and sniffled. "Don' feel good."

"Nothing a bit of paracetamol and lots of fluids and sleep won't fix." 

"I gave him that ... that Lemsip earlier, _seonsangnim_ ," Younghyun murmured, handing Wonpil a fistful of tissues. "Two hours ago?"

"That's good. Just make sure he keeps getting water down and that he eats. I remember this boy's appetite. Not the heartiest at best of times." 

"No," Wonpil protested faintly while mopping up his nose. 

"You'd better eat." Doctor Yi turned to Younghyun and pat him on the shoulder. "Well, I'll leave him in your capable hands. He's not dying. Don't fret."

Younghyun, it transpired, couldn't help but fret. Especially not when Wonpil's fever refused to break over the next two days, and he had to be coaxed into finishing a bowl of Younghyun's mother's own _juk_ recipe over the course of an hour. It was a bloody good thing that the Easter hols had started.

"Hyung, I can help," Dowoon said plaintively from the sitting room door, where Wonpil had insisted on being relocated to.

Wonpil had tried standing up, apparently bored of lying down, only to promptly swoon and almost knock over his bedside lamp after pushing himself off the edge of his bed. Younghyun, who'd been in the bathroom, had come running in to see Wonpil sitting on the floor and leaning against the side of his bed. 

"If you help," said Younghyun acerbically, who still hadn't quite recovered from the fright, "I will probably have _two_ invalids on my hands."

"I have a strong immune system!" Dowoon came very close to stamping his feet. Any longer in close contact with Wonpil and he'd probably start pouting unthinkingly, Younghyun feared. "And what about you, hyung, you're the one who fell sick all the time when we were kids."

"That," Younghyun shot back, "was when we were _kids_."

"Don't fight." Wonpil grimaced. "Head hurts." 

Chastened, Dowoon backed away, whispering, "Sorry, sorry hyung." 

"No, wait —" Younghyun stood up with the (finally) empty bowl and went over to the door. "Take this down to the kitchen, would you? And bring up the hot water." 

As Dowoon tiptoed carefully away on his errand, Younghyun reflected that he'd probably have brought the entire Protocols Office down on his head with that one order, if they were back home. But then again, if they were in Corea, he wouldn't have a sick Wonpil to look after. 

Younghyun's stomach flipped over at the thought. Knocking his head against the doorframe with a sigh, he turned to go check on his patient. 

Ensconced on the chaise longue under a worn, fuzzy yellow blanket, Wonpil had dozed off. He sniffled in his sleep, and there was a pinch between his brows. 

"You," Younghyun whispered, settling on the edge of the chaise longue and reaching for the stack of fever patches on the end table, "need to take care of yourself better." 

*

Jae, who had been very quickly absorbed into the life of the townhouse, was temporarily banished.

"We have to protect the Nation's Vocal Chords!" Wonpil giggled, then coughed.

Switching out the damp cloth on his forehead, Younghyun shushed him. 

"You'll get sick too," Sungjin pointed out. He had come by because — "You made it sound like Pilie was dying. Reports of his near-death have been greatly exaggerated." 

"I'll be fine," said Younghyun. 

"Oh no, don't catch the flu from me, 'hyunie-hyung," Wonpil pleaded softly, and rolled away, dislodging the cloth. 

"How," said Sungjin from where he was propping up the doorjamb, "could I not have foreseen this." 

But Sungjin did take over and sent Younghyun out to get some fresh air and assuage Jae's very well-hidden worries. So well-hidden he was waiting at the nearest Starbucks, peering into the dregs of his tea and tapping his fingers restlessly against the table-top. 

"The Costa was full," Jae said when Younghyun made his way to his table. "But I got you a sandwich anyway, inferior though it might be."

"Thanks. Starbucks is fine."

"Well I just thought, you know. Wonpilie always makes such a fuss about supporting local whatnot." 

"I think he just feels like he should be loyal because he worked part-time there as a teenager." Younghyun paused. That story was usually a precursor to the one where Wonpil burnt his fingers steaming milk and quit in a panic because he hadn't been able to practise for a whole week. 

"How _is_ he, really?" 

Younghyun shrugged and closed his eyes for a moment. "Better. Coherent. I think the fever's breaking." 

"You didn't take him to the hospital?"

"We wanted to." Younghyun snorted and shook his head. "The health system here is different from home. Wonpilie said something about not wanting to bother the GP and that he could just sleep it off with Lemsip. The embassy's doctor agreed, basically. Have you learnt about Lemsip?"

Jae squinted at him. "Have _you_ slept? You're babbling." 

"Yes, I've slept. I know how to pace myself."

"Sure," said Jae, sounding unconvinced. "You haven't been up all night long making sure Wonpilie doesn't die in his sleep?"

"It isn't _that_ bad."

"I mean, the way you talked about it made it sound _that bad_. Sungjin left his final project to come check on things, and you know how intense he gets."

The question really was how Jae knew, considering he'd only met Sungjin about three months ago.

Younghyun sighed, and unwrapped the sandwich that Jae had bought him. "I will admit I was slightly distressed when that brat fell trying to get out of bed."

"My dude," said Jae, "what the fuck?"

"Oh, you didn't know?"

" _No?_ " Jae pinched the bridge of his nose. "Okay, please tell me Wonpil is no longer at the falling out of bed stage."

"He's getting there," Younghyun told him. "Slowly. Very slowly."

But Wonpil did get better, by and by; his grandfather sent up an enormous bundle of ginseng (couriered by long-suffering embassy agents) along with cuttings of various dried flowers and herbs from his grandmother's gardens. Auntie Hyeyi popped by, when it had been five days and Wonpil was still weak with an intermittent fever and coughing, to bring soup and free Younghyun to work on ... everything that he had to work on. 

"You won't be any help to any of them," she said to him, brusque but kind, "or to yourself, if you get whatever this bug is. Go be a student for a few hours, child. You're graduating this year, aren't you? I've nursed this one through more illnesses than you want to know about." 

"I'm fine now," Wonpil protested from the chaise longue, where he was alternating between napping and catching up on his reading, before dissolving into coughs. "Hon — est — ly." At least they were less disturbingly chesty.

Sometimes, Younghyun thought as he took himself off to his room, it was so clear how Wonpil was the distillation of both his parents. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this part SO LONG AGO... I think it was one of the first set pieces that I wanted to exist and then ... it just ended up in year 3! 
> 
> please let me know what you thought, even if this was a wee one! <3 and also please [retweet!](https://twitter.com/forochel/status/1352849337328545794?s=20) if you like


	9. Dowoon Makes An Offer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> two important conversations, and one very sweaty younghyun

Three years ago, Younghyun had not envisioned this.

When Acting Captain Song had offered him a free education in exchange for accompanying His Majesty to London as his personal guard, he had not anticipated ... well. He hadn't anticipated much of the past three years. Certainly not cramming with two coursemates into his capstone project supervisor's stuffy office for an excruciating half hour, feeling a sense of panicked anxiety _entirely unrelated to his actual job_ rising up in his chest.

Younghyun at twenty had been a fucking short-sighted idiot. Who needed all this education, anyway?

"Lieutenant, is everything all right?" asked Sergeant Ok. She had taken point on keeping an eye on the house whilst Younghyun had been otherwise occupied.

Younghyun opened his mouth, and then decided to just nod. In reality, his head was a-whirl with an updated list of things to be done. All he wanted to do was to lie flat on his back and do nothing for an hour or so. But he had come so far; it wouldn't do to give up now.

She gave him a doubtful look, then dipped her head. "Everything's been quiet. Pyeha is working in his room, and Wonpil-daegam has not returned."

After thanking and dismissing Sergeant Ok, Younghyun trudged balefully up the stairs. He was thinking wistful thoughts about the day he would be free when he heard Dowoon call out for him. "Hyung."

Younghyun held back a sigh. "Give me a moment, Dowoon-ah." He really had been looking forward to just ... lying down for a moment.

After changing into comfortable home clothes, Younghyun went across the corridor to Dowoon's room, phone in hand. Dowoon was at his study desk and looked up at Younghyun's knock.

"Hyung! Good. Uh." Dowoon looked unaccountably nervous. It made _Younghyun_ nervous. "Um, sit down?"

Younghyun sat slowly down on the armchair in front of the eternally unlit grate in Dowoon's room. "I'm sitting down. So. What ... is it?"

He watched as Dowoon fidgeted.

"This isn't — I haven't —" Dowoon started, then paused and swallowed, visibly collecting himself.

"Dowoonie," Younghyun said, trying to keep the dread at bay. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong! I mean, nothing more than usual. I mean." Dowoon frowned and looked down at his feet. "It's just ... I'm all grown up now, aren't I?"

Younghyun blinked. Crisis scenarios unreeled rapidly in his head: was Dowoon secretly dating someone; was he dating that girl from his course, the one who was into anime; _how_ could Younghyun not have noticed; or — or — maybe he wanted to run away and start a band with his friend Okwe? But how would that work, with two drummers?

"And so are you," said Dowoon nonsensically — Younghyun had been an adult for two years at least. "It's just. You like London, don't you, hyung?"

"Uh." Younghyun was going to get whiplash. "It's okay. I like some things about it." Oh. Was it — "Dowoonie, it's okay to feel like you'll miss London, you know? You're not a bad king if you do."

"I know." Dowoon looked a little crestfallen, strangely.

"What's up, then?" Younghyun said. "Wait, did you look yourself up on the internet? I _told_ you —"

"No no no." Dowoon huffed a little. "It's just that ... I've been thinking, you know, I have been thinking about ... my time in London, and the nature of — of duty, and what it means to honour that, and — I —"

Younghyun stared at him. Was this an abdication crisis in the making?

"What ... what would you ..." Dowoon was stumbling over his words now. "Oh, _fuck_ it. There's no two ways about it. Hyung, I could ... I _can_ release you from your service, you know."

Younghyun's mind went blank.

"What?"

"From your oath." Dowoon blinked and glanced briefly to the side. "Both of them. You'd be free, then."

"F...ree?" Wondered if he'd caught Wonpil's illness from weeks ago and was only just now succumbing, such an intense sense of vertigo hit him. What, Younghyun thought wildly, had he done to deserve this?

"Yes. You wouldn't have to be trapped —"

"No, I — no."

Dowoon's brows were drawn together. "No? You wouldn't like —"

"No!" Younghyun got to his feet and shook his head wildly. "Would I _like_ ...? Is this what you think of me? Is this how _little_ you think of me?"

"Little? Hyung, no! I only thought —" Dowoon stared up at him. "I — hyung, I just thought. I want you to be happy."

"You think I'd be _happy_ with this?"

"Wouldn't you?" Dowoon sounded very young and lost. "You can stay here with Wonpilie-hyung, then."

Younghyun drew in a quick breath and swallowed down the rush of acid.

 _Unfair_.

He could. He might be happy, even. But there would always be that gnawing sense of betrayal, the haunting failure and regret he sometimes saw in the lines on his father's face. And — he _had_ set himself on this path, he had worked _so hard_ for his parents' blessing, for the trust and respect of his fellows-in-arms, as well the — and he could not made be more keenly aware of this — the general Corean public, no thanks to the _Dong-A Ilbo_.

And he had made a _promise_ to a lonely little boy who'd just been orphaned by his own uncle. Who was no longer so little, no, but still lonely.

With so much hanging in the balance, what was — what was this nascent, tender thing that was equal parts joy and pain? That was already so much more than anything Younghyun had ever known to desire?

"I say again: is this what you really think of me?"

Dowoon looked away, face crumpling in distress. "I don't understand ..."

You —" Younghyun cut himself off with a snarl. _Wonpil_ understood. That's why he'd never pushed for anything more. "I can't talk to you right now, _pyeha_. Please forgive me. I must take my — I have to go."

He turned and strode swiftly down the stairs without waiting for a response.

There was a buzzing in his ears as he shoved his feet angrily into his running shoes and headed out of the door after arming the lock. The worst part, Younghyun thought, was that there was a part of him that very much wanted to say yes. A horrible, traitorous, weak part of him that wouldn't go away no matter how hard his feet pounded pavement then packed earth or how much his lungs were starting to ache.

Slowing down to a jog, Younghyun looked around and realised that he'd run all the way along the Serpentine through to Kensington.

As if on cue, his phone, strapped to his arm, buzzed.

Probably one of the security detail asking for a status update. They wouldn't have failed to spot his flight from the house.

But no — he slowed further, staring at his phone, heart now pounding from more than just exertion.

 _I'm at the RCM - come walk me home_?

*

"Did you run _all the way here_?" was the first thing out of Wonpil's mouth when he emerged from the front doors and met Younghyun waiting on the steps across the way. "Wait — you'll get a cold now that you're all ..." he waved a hand. "Damp."

"I'm fine," said Younghyun, despite the fact that he'd been shivering a little in the brisk spring breeze. He hadn't quite dared besmirch the vaunted halls of the Royal College of Music with his sweaty presence, even though there would have been shelter from the wind inside.

"I'm getting you a towel." Wonpil caught his wrist. "Come on."

"What—"

"The RCM shop," said Wonpil. "There are monogrammed towels. Don't ask."

He really, Younghyun thought ruefully to himself as he left Wonpil pull him along, didn't make it easy.

"I've mostly dried off," he tried.

Wonpil surveyed him critically. "Well, okay, a new t-shirt then, at least. What's Dowoonie going to do if his principal shadow comes down with a head cold?"

Possibly because he'd been so recently shaken -- so recently _insulted_ and because being around Wonpil was always a dangerously disarming experience, Younghyun made a rude noise in the back of his throat.

They came to an abrupt stop under the painted, judgmental stare of some old, white musical man in a wig. Wonpil gave him a long look.

"All right. What did my royal..." Wonpil smiled a little at Younghyun's reflexive twitch. "Royal pain-in-the-arse of a cousin say to you?"

Younghyun fidgeted and tightened his lips. He didn't want Wonpil to know. It had been fine so far, whatever it was that they were. Whatever it was that they were doing. Their interstices were so full of unsaid things; what was one more?

He started off down the corridor to where the RCM gift shop was.

"Hey!" Wonpil's grip around his wrist tightened as he stumbled to catch up. "Younghyu—"

"He didn't tell you?" It was easier like this, with an excuse not to meet Wonpil's eyes.

Wonpil sighed. "No, we were just finishing up a workshop, so I just got a whole series of very distressed Dowoonie texts. _Hyung is pissed off help oh no crying face_."

"He did not." Younghyun couldn't help chuff a laugh at Wonpil's attempted imitation, the cold seething knot in his chest loosening a little more. "He just ..." Looking around the corridor, Younghyun shook his head. "I don't want to talk about it here."

"Okay." Wonpil shook Younghyun's wrist lightly and looked up, which basically forced Younghyun to tilt his face towards him anyway. He was biting his lip uncertainly, his eyes wide and concerned. "But later?"

Their conversation had taken them to the shop's entrance. Near the cashier, Younghyun spotted piles of folded t-shirts and hoodies on a table.

Humming non-commitally in response to Wonpil, he pointed at the table and started towards it. "Oh, there are the t-shirts."

"Hyung," Wonpil complained, dropping his wrist to swat at him. "Don't distract me."

"I'm not distracting you." Younghyun ducked around a girl who was clearly trying to pick out souvenir pins for family or friends. "This _was_ your original mission."

Wonpil pushed his lips into a dissatisfied moue and shook his head. "You're so annoying."

"Mm, well. Better you know now than later."

Humphing in a way that resembled his grandfather, Wonpil let himself be led towards teh clothes. But choosing a more weather-appropriate top and then finding a bathroom for Younghyun to change granted only a temporary reprieve from Wonpil's line of inquiry.

At least he waited until they were in the park to continue.

"All right," said Wonpil briskly. "Now you're all warm and we're far from any prying ears, so..."

"I feel like an imposter," said Younghyun instead, smoothing a hand over the RCM logo printed on the soft grey cotton of the hoodie Wonpil had insisted he acquire.

"Kang Young _hyun_ , stop stalling. Please."

Younghyun tried gathering his thoughts and parsing them out through the anger and disappointment and fear. There really was nothing at all, when it come down to it, to stop Dowoon from dismissing Younghyun from his Guard.

"It's just ..." he sighed, crossed his arms. "I don't want you to feel — I —"

"Me? Did Dowoonie —" Wonpil frowned. "Was it about me?"

Younghyun pressed his lips together hard. It wasn't _not_ about Wonpil. It would be a lie and in any case — no; there was nothing for it. He just had to tell him.

" _Pyeha_ ," Younghyun measured his words out carefully, "offered to release me from my service to him."

When he looked at Wonpil, there was an odd look on his face. It was, Younghyun had come to learn over time, the one he got whenever Younghyun got all Palace formal.

"To release ... but then what would you —"

"He said I would be free to —" Younghyun faltered and looked away, curled his fingers into the overlong hems of his new pullover. "He said I would be free to — that I would be free."

"He said _what_?" Wonpil gasped, before the implications visibly sank in. "Oh. _Oh_."

Wonpil was quiet for a long few paces.

Far across the green expanse, dotted with picnickers and Londoners just out to enjoy a sunny spring afternoon, the Serpentine lapped against its grassy banks. Joggers thumped their way past them on the path. Younghyun stuffed his hands into the pockets of his joggers, so that he wouldn't do anything stupid.

"Oh, Dowoonie," sighed Wonpil eventually. His smile, when Younghyun glanced down at him, was rueful. Then, before Younghyun could look away, Wonpil caught his gaze. His eyes were clear and piercing. "You won't be taking him up on it, will you?"

Unable to trust the steadiness of his voice, or his ability to put words together, Younghyun shook his head mutely.

"I thought not."

It would have been especially counterproductive then, but Younghyun wanted to kiss him so badly. Or really, just to pull him close to a stop and hold him, to say that in any life but this one, if they had met in any life but this one, he would have stayed and stayed and stayed.

Wonpil looked away, biting his lip pensively. Younghyun wondered how to apologise for his priorities.

Thus they walked in silence that was not entirely uncomfortable, but without the ease that usually came with Wonpil's company, until they reached the crossroads that would take them home.

Here, Wonpil let out a little sigh and crooked a smile when Younghyun glanced over. His eyes glimmered a little. "You — I understand, you know. We — I'm not supposed to know, but harabeoji almost went over to look after ... oh, everything. Back when."

Younghyun had not known this. He thought about unpredictable, kind, eccentric Buyeong-daegam taking up a regency in his old age, willingly separated from Wonpil's intimidatingly celestial, kind, indulgent grandmother and all the madness of his family. It was inconceivable.

"But he didn't," said Younghyun.

"No." Wonpil glanced down at his feet. "I think it's the only time I ever saw him and _halmeoni_ fight. Didn't understand half of it, and _noona_ found me eavesdropping, but —" He paused. They shuffled aside onto the lawn for a flock of passing joggers. "I understood that maybe _harabeoji_ was going to go away and I wouldn't see him ever again and that it was because. Or, well, I thought it was because Corea was taking him away. My grandfather. From me."

"Ah," Younghyun managed. He had no idea what to say.

"Quite. I mean, I was, what, twelve? And loved, and spoilt, and — and even though harabeoji told us why he had to go back for the funeral and who'd died, and that I couldn't come along to keep an eye on him, I didn't understand all the way. I made such a fuss, hyung." Wonpil let out a wry laugh. "I threatened to run away and join Arsenal's youth team in revenge. As if they'd have taken me."

"I mean..." Younghyun traced the solemn curve of Wonpil's face in three quarter profile with his eyes, trying to feel his way through the turn this conversation had taken. "It's understandable. Buyeong-daegam loves you all so much."

"Mmm." Wonpil dipped his head. "And he'd have loved Dowoonie as much and as well, I'm sure, if he'd gone. It's not like harabeoji is the only family I have. And Dowoonie has — basically no-one, does he? In Corea. Except his noona and you. He doesn't show it, but ..."

Younghyun blinked. There was something about all of this reasoning that felt familiar, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it. Frowning, he said, "Wonpil-ah..."

"Do you understand what I'm trying to say, hyung?" Wonpil looked up suddenly.

"I ... think so?" Warmth spread through his cheeks at the inspectionary look Wonpil gave him. "But you don't have to, I don't know, feel sorry? For Buyeong _-_ daegam's decision."

"I don't," said Wonpil swiftly. "But knowing all of that, and looking back on it now, and having met Dowoonie ... I'm just saying, I understand."

Biting his lip, Younghyun glanced away from Wonpil. Their shadows stretched long out over the grass in front of them. "Okay. I — okay." _Thank you_ seemed cheap, under the circumstances.

"Good." Even out of the corner of his eye, Younghyun could see Wonpil turn on that determined cheer. "And we do still have — I mean, it isn't June yet."

"It isn't," Younghyun agreed, briefly haunted by the reminder of the exams to come and the capstone project that seemed to mushroom new complications every time he so much as breathed in its direction. But he'd take an unending month of those if it meant ... if it meant delaying the inevitable.

"Come on then." Wonpil slipped an arm through the loose crook of Younghyun's elbow and curled his fingers, long and lovely, into the soft fabric of the RCM hoodie. This was all done diffidently, but his ears tinted pink under Younghyun's shocked gaze. "It's a lovely day out. Let's go look at the Rose Garden."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've had the beats in here planned and half-sketched out for SO LONG!!! I am very excited to finally have reached this part. all the noble stupidity ;3;
> 
> Please let me know what you thought in the comments! <3 
> 
> ETA: here is [the publicity tweet](https://twitter.com/forochel/status/1355924378890985475?s=20)! please retweet it if you'd like!


	10. twist and shout!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in loco parentis: youngfeel edition

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> twist and shout (beatles) was a COVER. I have nothing I can think of saying so here listen to [this very soothing song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1ViAIdO3i4).

The aftermath found Dowoon subdued and prone to shooting _both_ Younghyun and Wonpil bewildered looks.

Wonpil had disappeared into the kitchen when they'd got back from Hyde Park. He'd thundered down the stairs towards the smell of cooking ramyeon, yelling _YOON DOWOON! A WORD IF YOU PLEASE!,_ sounding for all the world like what Younghyun imagined an irate Uncle Junghoon would.

Still dazed from a crisp golden evening of being led around the Rose Garden, Younghyun had wandered _up_ the other flight of stairs. The sweet heavy scent of roses would from now on always summon up those sense memories: Wonpil pressed close and warm; his hiccuping laughter a physical sensation; the moment they had passed a cluster of white-haired old ladies, and one had in that over-loud way old people had remarked, _oh what a sweet pair._

Whatever had passed between the cousins whilst he had been recovering in the shower from the emotional whiplashes of the afternoon, Younghyun never found out.

Only sometimes, when Wonpil would do something like bring back extra sausage rolls from tea at his placement school and give them all to Younghyun with a sweet, indulgent look that was the better present, Dowoon would get a look on his face like — like a concussed puppy.

Or he would often look swiftly between the two of them working side-by-side in the piano room, and open his mouth. Only to wince and shut it — Younghyun suspected Wonpil of kicking him — look briefly affronted, then confused again.

Only once, late at night, whispering comically like he was afraid Wonpil might overhear from a floor away, Dowoon tried tentatively: "Hyung, I didn't mean to — to offend."

Younghyun paused, hand on his door. Raised a quizzical eyebrow.

"But I just —" His Majesty quite literally pouted; Wonpil's corruption of him was complete; Lady Noh would be aghast — "is the Throne really worth it," he mumbled. Younghyun revised his earlier thought: Lady Noh would be _dead on the floor_.

But this too was just so like Dowoon — to not perceive just how beloved he was, just as himself.

"I swore my oath," Younghyun replied, "to _you_ , Dowoon-ah."

He left Dowoon with furrowed brow, in silent consternation.

So Dowoon was for many days uncertain around Younghyun, in a way entirely novel. Uncertain and with an underlying hint of sorrow in his gaze, which was less amusing.

That was, until he let out a shout in the sitting room one morning. Younghyun assumed he'd had some sort of breakthrough on his dissertation, but then Dowoon was turning to him with a broad smile on his face.

"I didn't want to tell you, hyung," he said. Before Younghyun's heart rate could go stratospheric, he went on. "I've been applying for master's programmes. And I got into one, here in London. So you'll have one more year, after all."

Younghyun's heart leapt in his chest despite himself. A whole year, unanticipated. And — and it wasn't just him who would be glad, after all, for this deep, deep breath before the long exhalation that would follow.

"We will," he told Dowoon — knowing that Dowoon would recognise this for the forgiveness it was. "The both of us will."

*

In typical fashion, Wonpil absorbed this new development and proceeded with the same quiet, equable confidence that had had him take Younghyun's arm and cling to it their entire perambulation around the Rose Garden. In this way he was very like his grandmother.

Well, no, first had come the wild delight flashing over his face; his eyes dancing and a smile taking over half his face as his eyes had darted over to Younghyun. Wonpil then hugged Dowoon hard, stayed cuddling him for a good half hour before his leg cramped up from the weird position.

Then he sank down on the chaise next to Younghyun. "All right then. Well done, Dowoonie. Let's go get drinks," he said, gave Younghyun an impish grin.

Younghyun sighed, but couldn't help the answering smile.

Dowoon's announcement had felt like — like the relieving, firm tug in the shoulders when one's parachute released . The headlong hurtle towards an inevitable ending that Younghyun's thoughts always shied away from, suddenly gentled, slowed. With this gift of time, Younghyun was suddenly seized conversely by an urgent need to savour every moment. To take everything, _anything_ he was given, all of Wonpil's sweet light indulgences.

"Dowoonie ... is very precious," Wonpil said over an early shared breakfast in the kitchen. Before he went to work, and before Younghyun went out for a run.

"Yes," agreed Younghyun.

Wonpil smiled down at his heated up sausage roll: a strange mix of rueful tenderness. "He's ... do you know what he said to me the other day?"

"That he's the one who actually ate all your clementines?" Younghyun _had_ tried to warn Dowoon off such a foolish infraction, but Dowoon had been in full tyrannical flight that evening. Or very stressed out about _his_ dissertation, but that wouldn't matter to Wonpil when it came to his beloved citrus fruits.

"He what!" Wonpil looked momentarily outraged. "That brat!"

Younghyun laughed, tossed his head back.

Easily tickled as ever, Wonpil joined him. "What!" he protested between giggles. Those were _mine_!"

When Younghyun sobered, he found Wonpil looking at him, mirth mixed with melancholy in the lines of his face. It struck Younghyun breathless then — hard and fast like a blow to the solar plexus — the desire to take that hard, delicate face within his hands and just kiss him.

"What is it?"

"Nothing," Wonpil replied. He shook his head. "Just — ugh, I'll deal with _that_ later. No, Dowoonie just said ... he said something about how it was important to ... to find and hold onto, uh, what's that he said? Small but certain joys? Then he quoted some proverb, even though he _knows full well_ I don't know all that fancy Corean."

Younghyun couldn't help cracking a grin. His Majesty was terminally overeducated. He explained: "It's all that private tutoring."

"Goodness. He's missed out on so much, hasn't he? Even with all this ..." Wonpil waved around the kitchen. "All this luxury."

Leaning back against the kitchen table, Younghyun hummed in thought. In his early teens, he'd had idyllic afternoons at arcades, chasing his school friends up and down the public beaches in Busan, pick-up basketball games on outdoor courts. A wistful look would always creep over Dowoon's face, back then, whenever Younghyun had told him about these outings. And once — and Younghyun would _not_ be sharing this with Wonpil — there had been his gleeful, teasing curiosity, when Younghyun had told him about kissing Kwon Eun-ji outside the band room in his last year of middle school.

"Yeah," sighed Younghyun.

"I want to give all these things to him, Younghyun," said Wonpil absently. He did this more and more often now — forget honorifics. Younghyun couldn't find it in himself to mind overmuch. "Just ... what it's like to be just a lad, you know?"

"I don't think it's possible," said Younghyun, trying to save Wonpil the disappointment. "He is ... who he is."

Wonpil got that stubborn set to his mouth. " _I_ think you're too used to all of this too."

"Wonpil-ah ..." Younghyun rubbed at the smooth grain of the kitchen bench. "I'm not trying to — disagree or. Fight. I just — the reality —"

" _You_ worry about that," said Wonpil firmly. "And I'll worry about Dowoonie getting to ... getting to be someone other than just His Majesty King Dowoonie for..." he sobered. "For as long as he can be."

And to that, Younghyun couldn't really find anything to say.

*

"Is this what my taxes are funding?" Jae demanded, glancing conspicuously between the two of them. "Not that I begrudge your happiness, pyeha, but —"

"No," said Dowoon equably. "My education is paid out of my my private holdings."

"I'm not getting my full wage right now," Younghyun put in, feeling obscurely defensive.

"You _what_ ," demanded Wonpil.

"I mean, I have room and board ..." said Younghyun weakly in the face of Wonpil's outrage.

Jae's brow furrowed; he looked at Sungjin. Sungjin, for his part, had adopted that long-suffering, put-upon look that made Dowoon like him so.

"Well, uh," said Jae. "All right then. I'll stand you a round, you pitiful fuck."

The pub that they were in was not their usual, but a neighbourhood one tucked away down a side-street near Regent's Park. Sungjin had recommended it on the strength of their selection of dark beers on tap.

Jae slid out of the booth to go to the bar.

"I'll go with you," said Dowoon. He _had_ been looking curiously at the posters and prints decorating the walls on their way in.

Sighing, Younghyun slid out of the booth after him.

Behind his back, he heard Sungjin mutter, "Are we sending a delegation, now?" and Wonpil's bright laughter, as well as a teasing, "I guess I'd better go make sure they all behave."

"You can carry your own glass, pyeha," said Jae to Dowoon as they made their way across the room. "With both hands, even."

The booths and tables that they passed were all full of people, and the low roar of chatter and occasional shouts of laughter filled the dimly-lit pub. It was positively peaceful, for a Friday night. Sungjin had chosen right, it seemed; it seemed to be mostly working professionals having Friday night drinks in here.

"It's as nice pub," Wonpil said to Younghyun.

Younghyun glanced about. "Looks like it."

Of course, this meant that someone bounded up to them just a few feet away from the bar. Jae swerved around and slid into an empty spot at the bar to begin his quest for the bartender's attention.

"Dowoon!" bellowed that someone: a tall, broad bloke with floppy black hair. He looked familiar; Younghyun started going through his mental index. "Mate! I heard you got onto the course too!"

Dowoon was inaudible under the low din, but he looked pleased and put his hand out to shake. He was caught up in a hug instead, owlish with surprise whilst being pounded on the back.

Reacting purely on instinct, Younghyun started surging forwards. Wonpil caught his elbow and was half-dragged along with him.

"Mate," Chris — Younghyun remembered his name now — Christopher Weaver from Southend and also several of His Majesty's tutorials and also apparently very oblivious— was saying. "Has nobody ever given you a hug before?"

Dowoon coughed. "Not — uh, not quite like this, no." He pat Chris on the back in cautious imitation, presumably to show willing.

"Er," said Christopher Weaver, disengaging from Dowoon's person when he seemed to finally note Younghyun's presence at Dowoon's elbow. "And ... this is ..." His eyes slid to the right, where Wonpil was still holding onto Younghyun's arm and looking like he was about to expire from embarrassment.

"Oh, hyung." Dowoon was absolutely utilising his Peacemaking Diplomat voice. "This is Chris, from my sociolinguistics seminar."

Which Younghyun already knew, but Chris didn't.

"Right." Chris looked still half-bemused.

"Chris, this is Younghyun, an old friend. He's like an older brother to me."

" _Right_ ," said Chris, now looking as though he understood. But what he understood, Younghyun had no idea.

"And I'm Wonpil." Wonpil held a hand out with a pointed look at Younghyun. "Dowoon and me are cousins."

"Cousins! Nice!" said Chris. "So you're just like the Three Musketeers then, the three of you."

Wonpil snorted. "I'm not sure I qualify."

"You're from around here, then, not like Dowoon?"

Behind them, Jae had just collected their drinks and was now approaching. And attempting to telegraph something with his eyebrows at Younghyun. Younghyun didn't speak fucking _eyebrow_.

"Reading," replied Wonpil.

"Cool beans." Chris stuck his hands in his pocket and smiled at Wonpil in a way that made Younghyun shift his weight. "I'm doing my Masters next year too, with Dowoon, so maybe I'll see you around."

"Oh boy." Younghyun saw Jae mouth.

"Perhaps," was what Wonpil said. He was smiling opaquely, though his grip on Younghyun's arm tightened briefly. Younghyun tilted his head to look at Wonpil quizically.

"Hey, a little help with our drinks here?" Jae strode up to them, trayful of glasses wobbling in his grip.

"Oh, here, let me." Wonpil let go of Younghyun and took two tall pints. "Well, it was nice meeting you, Chris. I'm sure Dowoon's happy to be sharing a course with you next year."

He swept past Younghyun with barely a look.

"I think you're in trouble," Jae said helpfully as he followed after.

Feeling vaguely wronged and even more vaguely, comprehensibly, Younghyun trailed them all back to their booth.

"Never a boring moment with you around," said Sungjin when they all piled back in around him. He'd apparently had a clear view of everything. "No offence, pyeha."

"Was it that exciting?" Dowoon wondered.

Sungjin gave Younghyun a tiny smirk. "Well, Younghyun made it exciting."

" _Exciting_ is one word for it," said Wonpil.

Leaning back into the seat cushions, Younghyun heaved a sigh.

"I was quite excited," said Dowoon peaceably. "After I was confused."

Wonpil put his glass down. "I could tell. You know, after being dragged several feet through a crowd."

Turning to him, Younghyun protested, "I didn't _mean_ to."

"You didn't _stop_ ," snapped Wonpil.

Younghyun put _his_ glass down too. "How could I have?!"

"SO!" said Jae loudly. "WHAT COURSE DO YOU GET ONTO AGAIN, DOWOON-AH?"

Sungjin's face was half-hidden in his pint glass, but his eyebrows were so mobile as to give away his amusement anyway.

"Wonpil-ah," Younghyun said, low and as conciliatory as possible, after a deep breath. "Can we talk about this later?"

On his other side, Dowoon was telling Jae all about his post-graduate programme.

Wonpil's mouth had contracted into a dissatisfied pout. "Fine," he muttered, relaxing a fraction.

Younghyun searched Wonpil's face for — he didn't know what, really. He paused, and then tried again: "I'm sorry dragging you, but you — I mean, I couldn't just. I couldn't not, when there was — when _that_ was happening."

Something unsettling happened to Wonpil's expression then — a shiver, something a little like a cracking of that sulky purse of his lips. An unhappy moue Younghyun wanted nothing more than to press his thumb to, smoothe away into a smile.

Wonpil shook his head, lashes dipping low and briefly obscuring his eyes.

"I said fine, didn't I?" He lifted his gaze and one corner of his mouth: warning and reassurance in one. "I'll let it go."

*

He let it go until they had all come back to the Belgravia house — all of them, because Sungjin didn't want to get on the nightbus "with that one creepy drunk" and Jae was "just along for a good time". _He_ would be actually leaving London at the end of the term, of course, with the conclusion of his residency. In a fit of sentimentality he'd brought along a polaroid camera and got the waitress to take photographs of them in their booth, squashed together like a bunch of entirely unremarkable 20-something year olds.

"Look at us," said Jae fondly, flapping the polaroids he'd slipped into his coat pockets. "Do we look like there's royalty among us?"

"You're getting sentimental in your old age, Jaehyung-ah," Sungjin told him. But he was also examining the polaroid Jae had handed him very closely. "Pyeha, you look like a disreputable hobo."

But all their banter was not enough to hold this off:

"Now." Wonpil turned to Younghyun when he'd just tossed his fleece jumper down onto the chaise longue.

Hopelessly, Younghyun asked, "Now? But I already apolog—"

"Oh, not _that_." Wonpil waved his hand before nodding at Dowoon. "Do you remember what we talked about, in the kitchen."

In Younghyun's peripheral vision, Jae was making a complicated face at Sungjin, who had merely adopted a martyred expression.

"Yes, and I distinctly remember telling you—"

"You have to let Dowoonie have _some_ normal social interaction!" Wonpil interrupted hotly. "He's got to have _some_ socialisation!"

("What the hell, is pyeha a toddler or a pet dog?" Jae muttered _sotto voce_ in the background.)

"Do you know how easy it would have been to assassinate pyeha?" Younghyun said sharply

"It's always about the assassinations with you! Honestly, do you _really_ think that — oh, I don't know — my mate Padma who _plays the viola_ is going to _assassinate Dowoonie_?"

"That was _two years_ ago, Pilie, would you just —"

Dowoon, who had been standing by the fireplace the whole time looking caught out, weakly interjected, "Don't fight..."

In not enough of an undertone, Sungjin muttered to Jae, who was looking a little like a deer in headlights: "This isn't new", which was just ... mortifying.

"We're not fighting," Wonpil told Dowoon. "We're just having a ... heated discussion."

"This isn't up for _discussion_!" Younghyun cried. "This is a matter of national fucking security!"

Wonpil drew back a little; Younghyun immediately felt sorry, and then annoyed about feeling sorry.

"This is like my parents arguing over my curfew when I was a teenager," said Jae, not _sotto voce_.

"Jae-sshi," said Younghyun very coldly, "I very much doubt you were at great risk of an assassination even as a teenaged pansori prodigy."

Jae made a wordless sound of frustration and threw his hands up in the air.

"I don't think," Dowoon said clearly, cutting through the thick tension, "that I'll ever get as many hugs again, as I have in London."

This had the sum effect of making Wonpil melt into a sad puddle and Younghyun feel aggrieved.

"I'll hug you whenever I see you in Corea, pyeha," Jae told him, and loped over to do just so. "Hey, look, Wonpil-ah. No dramatic security shenanigans!"

Younghyun heaved a sigh.

"I'm sure you'd have got there in time anyway, if there had been real danger," Wonpil said quietly.

"Your faith in me," Younghyun said tersely, "is extremely disturbing."

Wonpil looked at him for a long moment, before his shoulders slumped. He muttered something inaudible.

"You _had_ vetted him anyway, hyung," Dowoon pointed out. "He wouldn't have been in my tutes, otherwise."

Younghyun gave up. He was just about to ask if Sungjin and Jae wanted cars called for them when Jae let out an ugly snort. He clapped his hands briskly three times. "Okay! Come on. Second round, we all deserve a settling drink after ... all that."

"You drink far too much for someone who's supposed to preserve your throat." But Sungjin shrugged his hoodie back on.

"I had precisely one cider earlier," said Jae. "We can't all put it away like you, Park Sungjin."

"Maybe if you put on some weight, Park Jaehyung."

"Why does everyone fight so much," sighed Dowoon.

Wonpil laughed, and went over to put an arm around him. "It's not _fighting_ , Dowoonie, it's just banter. You know, for a laugh."

"I'm very hurt, actually," deadpanned Jae.

"He isn't," Younghyun cut in before Dowoon could turn the big guilt-tripping eyes on Sungjin, who wasn't even looking in any case. "Trust me, Dowoonie, he really isn't."

Wonpil was giving him a speaking look when he turned to check in on him.

Younghyun blinked back at him, put his fleece back on, and followed them all back out the door. Wonpil lingered behind, Sungjin having taken up sentinel next to Dowoon — best hyung, Younghyun decided.

"You have to understand," Younghyun said quietly, this time crooking his elbow in invitation that was thankfully taken, "that this is not just me. This isn't just plain old Kang Younghyun being paranoid just because I'm naturally overprotective."

Wonpil was silent for a few paces, until they turned the corner. Then he exhaled a long, low breath. Half in defeat, half — half something else altogether. "I wish you didn't have to be," he said, probably as close to the truth neither of them dared to touch.

"I know." Younghyun sighed again. Up ahead, Dowoon's anorak-clad back was hunched over against the chill in the night air. The street was quiet; all was clear. "I know."

*

Any clouds overhanging from their _heated disagreement_ were promptly cleared a few days later, when Wonpil secured a position at his first placement school. He was all smiles and happy affection, and promptly set to enjoying his last summer of freedom before adulthood really hit. Where previously he had been out of the house for work, now it was because he was out and about as the weather warmed and the days lengthened.

In contrast, Younghyun (and Dowoon) were increasingly stuck indoors working on their final exams — either at home or in the library. On the better days, Wonpil would stay at home and tinker away at the piano. His own musical version of cheering them on, maybe. Younghyun sort of felt — felt like he was being selfish; he was, after all, was so preoccupied that all the time of Wonpil's he childishly wanted to himself (and would never admit this aloud) wasn't exactly something he could give in return.

All too soon, the exams were over.

Perhaps because this year had become penultimate, the Palace seemed to be in a hurry to have Dowoon back for the summer. There was barely any time between Dowoon's last exam and their flight back to Busan.

"I heard Dowoonie on the phone in the sitting room," Wonpil confessed quietly in the kitchen, the night before they were due to return. "When I got back from that picnic weeks ago."

"Oh, yeah?"

"He was promising his noona a great many things for covering him for one more year."

Younghyun blinked at him. "Ah...and?"

"Well, I mean, you know — is she very upset?" Wonpil asked. "Princess Soojin, I mean."

"You really could just call her noona."

"I've never even _met_ her! Answer my question!"

"You're still her younger cousin." Younghyun shrugged. "Anyway ... I don't think so? I don't know her very well. Gongju-mama mostly does research, you know, in the university labs... biochemistry things."

"Oh," said Wonpil. "I thought ... I don't know. I know harabeoji handles some ... some of the _estate._ I thought perhaps she might have to do that sort of thing too."

Younghyun looked at him curiously; he hadn't thought Wonpil that aware of the practicalities of running a royal household. Though — and it struck Younghyun all of a sudden how utterly ridiculous it was — he _was_ eighth in line to the throne.

"Soojin gongju-mama does, but that's all indoors, right? In the Palace. She's taken on all of the usual engagements and appearances Dowoon does, in his absence. I think this is just getting her out in fresh air more often than she did before Dowoonie left for university."

Wonpil pursed his lips, then pulled his legs up onto the bench and leaned against Younghyun's side in a motion so unconscious it ached. "I wish I could meet her. She sounds cool."

"She is cool, I guess." Younghyun was struck by a sudden amusing thought. "Yes, I think she would get on quite well with _your_ noona, in fact."

"Oh, so she's terrifying."

Younghyun couldn't help the way his smile deepened.

"Yes," he agreed indulgently. "That she is."

"Never mind then."

Younghyun laughed, the bright peal of it startling even himself. Wonpil laughed too, eyes bright under his lashes as he looked at Younghyun sideways.

"Oh, hyung," he said abruptly, the smile fading off his face. "Come back soon."

The laughter died in Younghyun's throat, as he sobered in a heartbeat. He met Wonpil's gaze squarely. They were both all too aware of the metaphorical sword hanging over their heads. The hourglass swiftly running out, even with Dowoon's unexpected gift.

"Don't worry, Wonpilie." Bravely, he took Wonpil's hand, felt his heart shudder within him when Wonpil curled his fingers to press into the hard, tendon-y backs of Younghyun's hands. "Summer will be short."

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHA 
> 
> ngl after reading some of your comments last chapter, all 5 of my precious readers, I was tempted to just change things up and scrap london year 4 all together. if the twist pleases you, you only have bysine to thank.
> 
> [here is the publicty tweet](https://twitter.com/forochel/status/1357532729416548352) please RT if you'd like.


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